LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

CALIFORNIA 

IRVINE 


LITERARY   FRIENDS 

AND 

ACQUAINTANCE 


Kiustratfi 


LITERARY    FRIENDS 

AND 

ACQUAINTANCE 

iTw 

A   PERSONAL   RETROSPECT 
OF  AMERICAN   AUTHORSHIP 


W.     D.     HO  WELLS 


ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER   fir-  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW   YORK   AND   LONDON 


202°) 


Copyright,  igoo,  1911,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS 


CONTENTS 

PART  PAGE 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL IX 

I.  MY  FIKST  VISIT  TO  NEW  ENGLAND 1 

II.  FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK       ...    67 

III.  ROUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 91 

IV.  LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 113 

V.  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 146 

VI.  THE  WHITE  MR.  LONGFELLOW 178 

VII.  STUDIES  OF  LOWELL 212 

VIII.  CAMBRIDGE  NEIGHBORS 251 

IX.  A  BELATED  GUEST 289 

X.  MY  MARK  TWAIN  307 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

W.    D.   HOWELLS,    1903    (PHOTOGRAVURE) Fr<mti*pi<™ 

JAMES   T.    FIELDS f«***P.    42 

"        56 

NVTHANIEL   HAWTHORNE 

it      1(54 

OLIVER   WENDELL   HOLMES 

"       1S^ 
HENRY   WADSWORTH   LONGFELLOW 

"      212 

J\MES   RUSSELL   LOWELL 

"       308 

MARK   TWAIN 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 

LONG  before  I  began  the  papers  whicH  make  up  this 
volume,  I  had  meant  to  write  of  literary  history  in 
New  England  as  I  had  known  it  in  the  lives  of  its 
great  exemplars  during  the  twenty-five  years  I  lived 
near  them.  In  fact,  I  had  meant  to  do  this  from  the 
time  I  came  among  them ;  but  I  let  the  days  in  which 
I  almost  constantly  saw  them  go  by  without  record  save 
such  as  I  carried  in  a  memory  retentive,  indeed,  beyond 
the  common,  but  not  so  full  as  I  could  have  wished 
when  I  began  to  invoke  it  for  my  work.  Still,  upon 
insistent  appeal,  it  responded  in  sufficient  abundance; 
and,  though  I  now  wish  I  could  have  remembered  more 
instances,  I  think  my  impressions  were  accurate  enough. 
I  am  sure  of  having  tried  honestly  to  impart  them  in 
the  ten  years  or  more  when  I  was  desultorily  en 
deavoring  to  share  them  with  the  reader. 

The  papers  were  written  pretty  much  in  the  order 
they  have  here,  beginning  with  My  First  Visit  to  New 
EnglandjVfhich  dates  from  the  earliest  eighteen-nineties, 
if  I  may  trust  my  recollection  of  reading  it  from  the 
manuscript  to  the  editor  of  Harper's  Magazine,  where 
we  lay  under  the  willows  of  Magnolia  one  pleasant 
summer  morning  in  the  first  years  of  that  decade, 
was  printed  no  great  while  after  in  that  periodical ;  but 
I  was  so  long  in  finishing  the  study  of  Lowell  that 
it  had  been  anticipated  in  Harper's  by  other  reminis 
cences  of  him,  and  it  was  therefore  first  printed  in 


BIBLIOGEAPHICAL 

Scribner's  Magazine.  It  was  the  paper  with  which  I 
took  the  most  pains,  and  when  it  was  completed  I  still 
felt  it  so  incomplete  that  I  referred  it  to  his  closest 
and  my  best  friend,  the  late  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  for 
his  criticism.  He  thought  it  wanting  in  unity ;  it  was  a 
group  of  studies  instead  of  one  study,  he  said;  I  must 
do  something  to  draw  the  different  sketches  together  in 
a  single  effect  of  portraiture;  and  this  I  did  my  best 
to  do. 

It  was  the  latest  written  of  the  three  articles  which 
give  the  volume  substance,  and  it  represents  more 
finally  and  fully  than  the  others  my  sense  of  the  lit 
erary  importance  of  the  men  whose  like  wre  shall  not 
look  upon  again.  Longfellow  was  easily  the  greatest 
poet  of  the  three,  Holmes  often  the  most  brilliant  and 
felicitous,  but  Lowell,  in  spite  of  his  forays  in  politics, 
was  the  finest  scholar  and  the  most  profoundly  literary, 
as  he  was  above  the  others  most  deeply  and  thoroughly 
]^ew  England  in  quality. 

While  I  was  doing  these  sketches,  sometimes  slighter 
and  sometimes  less  slight,  of  all  those  poets  and  essay 
ists  and  novelists  I  had  known  in  Cambridge  and  Bos 
ton  and  Concord  and  !N"ew  York,  I  was  doing  many 
other  things :  half  a  dozen  novels,  as  many  more  novel 
ettes  and  shorter  stories,  with  essays  and  criticisms  and 
verses;  so  that  in  January,  1900,  I  had  not  yet  done 
the  paper  on  Lowell,  which,  with  another,  was  to  com 
plete  my  reminiscences  of  American  literary  life  as  I 
had  witnessed  it.  When  they  were  all  done  at  last 
they  were  republished  in  a  volume  which  found  in 
stant  favor  beyond  my  deserts  if  not  its  own. 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  trouble  with  the  name,  but 
Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance  was  an  endeavor 
for  modest  accuracy  with  which  I  remained  satisfied 
until  I  thought,  long  too  late,  of  Literary  Friends  and 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 

Neighbors.  Then  I  perceived  that  this  would  have  been 
still  more  accurate  and  quite  as  modest,  and  I  gladly 
give  any  reader  leave  to  call  the  book  by  that  name 
who  likes. 

Since  the  collection  was  first  made,  I  have  written 
little  else  quite  of  the  kind,  except  the  paper  on  Bret 
Harte,  which  was  first  printed  shortly  after  his  death; 
and  the  study  of  Mark  Twain,  which  I  had  been  pre 
paring  to  make  for  forty  years  and  more,  and  wrote  in 
two  weeks  of  the  spring  of  1910.  Others  of  my  time 
and  place  have  now  passed  whither  there  is  neither 
time  nor  place,  and  there  are  moments  when  I  feel 
that  I  must  try  to  call  them  back  and  pay  them  such 
honor  as  my  sense  of  their  worth  may  give;  but  the 
impulse  has  as  yet  failed  to  effect  itself,  and  I  do  not 
know  how  long  I  shall  spare  myself  the  supreme  pleasure- 
pain,  the  "hochst  angenehmer  Schmerz,"  of  seeking  to 
live  here  with  those  who  live  here  no  more. 

W.  D.  H. 


LITERARY   FRIENDS 

AND 

ACQUAINTANCE 


LITERARY 
FRIENDS   AND  ACQUAINTANCE 


part  fffrst 
MY  FIRST   VISIT  TO  NEW  ENGLAND 


IF  there  was  any  one  in  the  world  who  had  his  being 
more  wholly  in  literature  than  I  had  in  1860,  I 
am  sure  I  should  not  have  known  where  to  find  him,  and 
I  doubt  if  he  could  have  been  found  nearer  the  centres 
of  literary  activity  than  I  then  was,  or  among  those 
more  purely  devoted  to  literature  than  myself.  I  had 
been  for  three  years  a  writer  of  news  paragraphs,  book 
notices,  and  political  leaders  on  a  daily  paper  in  an  in 
land  city,  and  I  do  not  know  that  my  life  differed  out 
wardly  from  that  of  any  other  young  journalist,  who 
had  begun  as  I  had  in  a  country  printing-office,  and 
might  be  supposed  to  be  looking  forward  to  advance 
ment  in  his  profession  or  in  public  affairs.  But  in 
wardly  it  was  altogether  different  with  me.  Inwardly 
I  was  a  poet,  with  no  wish  to  be  anything  else, 
unless  in  a  moment  of  careless  affluence  I  might  so  far 
forget  myself  as  to  be  a  novelist.  I  was,  with  my  friend 
J.  J.  Piatt,  the  half-author  of  a  little  volume  of  very 

A  1 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

unknown  verse,  and  Mr.  Lowell  had  lately  accepted  and 
had  begun  to  print  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  five  or  six 
poems  of  mine.  Besides  this  I  had  written  poems,  and 
sketches,  and  criticisms  for  the  Saturday  Press  of  New 
York,  a  long-forgotten  but  once  very  lively  expression 
of  literary  intention  in  an  extinct  bohemia  of  that  city; 
and  I  was  always  writing  poems,  and  sketches,  and 
criticisms  in  our  own  paper.  These,  as  well  as  my  feats 
in  the  renowned  periodicals  of  the  East,  met  with  kind 
ness,  if  not  honor,  in  my  own  city  which  ought  to  have 
given  me  grave  doubts  whether  I  was  any  real  prophet. 
But  it  only  intensified  my  literary  ambition,  already 
so  strong  that  my  veins  might  well  have  run  ink  rather 
than  blood,  and  gave  me  a  higher  opinion  of  my 
fellow-citizens,  if  such  a  thing  could  be.  They  were 
indeed  very  charming  people,  and  such  of  them  as 
I  mostly  saw  were  readers  and  lovers  of  books.  So 
ciety  in  Columbus  at  that  day  had  a  pleasant  refine 
ment  which  I  think  I  do  not  exaggerate  in  the  fond 
retrospect.  It  had  the  finality  which  it  seems  to  have 
had  nowhere  since  the  war ;  it  had  certain  fixed  ideals, 
which  were  none  the  less  graceful  and  becoming  be 
cause  they  were  the  simple  old  American  ideals,  now 
vanished,  or  fast  vanishing,  before  the  knowledge  of 
good  and  evil  as  they  have  it  in  Europe,  and  as  it  has 
imparted  itself  to  American  travel  and  sojourn.  There 
was  a  mixture  of  many  strains  in  the  capital  of  Ohio, 
as  there  was  throughout  the  State.  Virginia,  Ken 
tucky,  Pennsylvania,  New  York,  and  New  England 
all  joined  to  characterize  the  manners  and  customs. 
I  suppose  it  was  the  South  which  gave  the  social  tone ; 
the  intellectual  taste  among  the  elders  was  the  South 
ern  taste  for  the  classic  and  the  standard  in  literature ; 
but  we  who  were  younger  preferred  the  modern  au 
thors  :  we  read  Thackeray,  and  George  Eliot,  and  Haw- 

2 


MY    FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW    ENGLAND 

thorne,  and  Charles  Reade,  and  De  Quincey,  and  Ten 
nyson,  and  Browning,  and  Emerson,  and  Longfellow; 
and  I — I  read  Heine,  and  evermore  Heine,  when  there 
was  not  some  new  thing  from  the  others.  Now  and 
then  an  immediate  French  book  penetrated  to  us:  we 
read  Michelet  and  About,  I  remember.  We  looked  to 
England  and  the  East  largely  for  our  literary  opin 
ions;  we  accepted  the  Saturday  Review  as  law  if 
we  could  not  quite  receive  it  as  gospel.  One  of  us 
took  the  Cornhill  Magazine,  because  Thackeray  was 
the  editor;  the  Atlantic  Monthly  counted  many  readers 
among  us ;  and  a  visiting  young  lady  from  New  Eng 
land,  who  screamed  at  sight  of  the  periodical  in  one 
of  our  houses,  "  Why,  have  you  got  the  Atlantic  Month 
ly  out  here?"  could  be  answered,  with  cold  superiority, 
"  There  are  several  contributors  to  the  Atlantic  in 
Columbus."  There  were  in  fact  two :  my  room-mate, 
who  wrote  Browning  for  it,  while  I  wrote  Heine  and 
Longfellow.  But  I  suppose  two  are  as  rightfully  sev 
eral  as  twenty  are. 

II 

That  was  the  heyday  of  lecturing,  and  now  and  then 
a  literiiry  light  from  the  East  swam  into  our  skies.  I 
heard  and  saw  Emerson,  and  I  once  met  Bayard  Tay 
lor  socially,  at  the  hospitable  house  where  he  was  a 
guest  after  his  lecture.  Heaven  knows  how  I  got 
through  the  evening.  I  do  not  think  I  opened  my 
mouth  to  address  him  a  word;  it  was  as  much  as  1 
could  do  to  sit  and  look  at  him,  while  he  tranquilly 
smoked,  and  chatted  with  our  host,  and  quaffed  the 
beer  which  we  had  very  good  in  the  West.  All 
while  I  did  him  homage  as  the  first  author  by  calling 
whom  I  had  met,  I  longed  to  tell  him  how  much  1 
liked  his  poems,  which  we  used  to  get  by  heart  in  thos 

3 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

days,  and  I  longed  (how  much  more  I  longed !)  to  have 
him  know  that — 

"  Auch  ich  war  in  Arkadien  geboren," 

that  I  had  printed  poems  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  and 
the  Saturday  Press,  and  was  the  potential  author  of 
things  destined  to  eclipse  all  literature  hitherto  at 
tempted.  But  I  could  not  tell  him;  and  there  was  no 
one  else  who  thought  to  tell  him.  Perhaps  it  was  as 
well  so;  I  might  have  perished  of  his  recognition,  for 
my  modesty  was  equal  to  my  merit. 

In  fact  I  think  we  were  all  rather  modest  young 
fellows,  we  who  formed  the  group  wont  to  spend  some 
part  of  every  evening  at  that  house,  where  there  was 
always  music,  or  whist,  or  gay  talk,  or  all  three.  We 
had  our  opinions  of  literary  matters,  but  (perhaps 
because  we  had  mostly  accepted  them  from  England 
or  ~New  England,  as  I  have  said)  we  were  not  vain 
of  them ;  and  we  would  by  no  means  have  urged  them 
before  a  living  literary  man  like  that.  I  believe  none 
of  us  ventured  to  speak,  except  the  poet,  my  roommate, 
who  said,  He  believed  so  and  so  was  the  original  of  so 
and  so ;  and  was  promptly  told,  He  had  no  right  to  say 
such  a  thing.  Naturally,  we  came  away  rather  criti 
cal  of  our  host's  guest,  whom  I  afterwards  knew  as  the 
kindliest  heart  in  the  world.  But  we  had  not  shone 
in  his  presence,  and  that  galled  us;  and  we  chose  to 
think  that  he  had  not  shone  in  ours. 


Ill 

At  that  time  he  was  filling  a  large  space  in  the 
thoughts  of  the  young  people  who  had  any  thoughts 
about  literature.  He  had  come  to  his  full  repute  as 
an  agreeable  and  intelligent  traveller,  and  he  still 

4 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO   NEW   ENGLAND 

wore  the  halo  of  his  early  adventures  afoot  in  foreign 
lands  when  they  were  yet  really  foreign.     He  had  not 
written  his  novels  of  American  life,  once  so  welcomed, 
and  now   so   forgotten;   it  wras  very  long  before  he 
had  achieved  that  incomparable  translation  of  Faust 
which  must  always  remain  the  finest  and  best,  and 
which  would  keep  his  name  alive  with  Goethe's,  if  he 
had  done  nothing  else  worthy  of  remembrance.     But. 
what  then  most  commended  him  to  the  regard  of  us 
star-eyed  youth  (now  blinking  sadly  toward  our  seven 
ties)  was  the  poetry  which  he  printed  in  the  magazines 
from  time  to  time :  in  the  first  Putnam's  (where  there 
was  a  dashing  picture  of  him  in  an  Arab  burnoose 
and  a  turban),  and  in  Harper's,  and  in  the  Atlantic. 
It  was  often  very  lovely  poetry,  I  thought,  and  I  stil] 
think  so;  and  it  was  rightfully  his,  though  it  paid  the 
inevitable  allegiance  to  the  manner  of  the  great  mas 
ters  of  the  day.     It  was  graced  for  us  by  the  pathetic 
romance  of  his  early  love,  which  some  of  its  sweetest 
and  saddest  numbers  confessed,  for  the  young  girl  he 
married  almost  in  her  death  hour;  and  we  who  were 
hoping  to  have  our  hearts  broken,  or  already  had  them 
so,  would  have  been  glad  of  something  more  of  the  ob 
vious  poet  in  the  popular  lecturer  we  had  seen  refres 
ino-  himself  after  his  hour  on  the  platform. 

He  remained  for  nearly  a  year  the  only  author  . 
had  seen,  and  I  met  him  once  again  before  I  saw  any 
other.  Our  second  meeting  was  far  from  Columbus, 
as  far  as  remote  Quebec,  when  I  was  on  my  way  tc 
New  England  by  way  of  Niagara  and  the  Canadian 
fivers  and  cities^  I  stopped  in  Toronto,  and  realized 
ic  i  j  -  rUVi/vnt  nnv  siffnal  adventures,  out 
myself  abroad,  wren  -r- 

at  Montreal  something  very  pretty  happened  to  :ne. 
came  into  the  hotel  office,  the  evening  of  a  ft 
lonely  sight-seeing,  and  vamly  explored  the 

5 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

for  the  name  of  some  acquaintance;  as  I  turned  from 
it  two  smartly  dressed  young  fellows  embraced  it,  and 
1  heard  one  of  them  say,  to  my  great  amaze  and  hap 
piness,  "  Hello,  here's  Howells !" 

"  Oh,"  I  broke  out  upon  him,  "  I  was  just  looking 
for  some  one  I  knew.  I  hope  you  are  some  one  who 
knows  me!" 

"  Only  through  your  contributions  to  the  Saturday 
Press,"  said  the  young  fellow,  and  with  these  golden 
words,  the  precious  first  personal  recognition  of  my 
authorship  I  had  ever  received  from  a  stranger,  and 
the  rich  reward  of  all  my  literary  endeavor,  he  intro 
duced  himself  and  his  friend.  I  do  not  know  what  be 
came  of  this  friend,  or  where  or  how  he  eliminated 
himself ;  but  we  two  others  were  inseparable  from  that 
moment.  He  was  a  young  lawyer  from  New  York, 
and  when  I  came  back  from  Italy,  four  or  five  years 
later,  I  used  to  see  his  sign  in  Wall  Street,  with  a 
never-fulfilled  intention  of  going  in  to  see  him.  In 
whatever  world  he  happens  now  to  be,  I  should  like  to 
send  him  my  greetings,  and  confess  to  him  that  my 
art  has  never  since  brought  me  so  sweet  a  recompense, 
and  nothing  a  thousandth  part  so  much  like  Fame,  as 
that  outcry  of  his  over  the  hotel  register  in  Montreal. 
We  were  comrades  for  four  or  five  rich  days,  and 
shared  our  pleasures  and  expenses  in  viewing  the 
monuments  of  those  ancient  Canadian  capitals,  which 
I  think  we  valued  at  all  their  picturesque  worth.  We 
made  jokes  to  mask  our  emotions;  we  giggled  and 
made  giggle,  in  the  right  way;  we  fell  in  and  out  of 
love  with  all  the  pretty  faces  and  dresses  we  saw;  and 
we  talked  evermore  about  literature  and  literary  peo 
ple.  He  had  more  acquaintance  with  the  one,  and 
more  passion  for  the  other,  but  he  could  tell  me  of 
Pfaffs  lager-beer  cellar  on  Broadway,  where  the 

6 


MY    FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

Saturday  Press  fellows  and  the  other  Bohemians  met ; 
and  this,  for  the  time,  was  enough:  I  resolved  to  visit 
it  as  soon  as  I  reached  New  York,  in  spite  of  the  to 
bacco  and  beer  (which  I  was  given  to  understand  were 
de  rigueur),  though  they  both,  so  far  as  I  had  known 
them,  were  apt  to  make  me  sick. 

I  was  very  desolate  after  I  parted  from  this  good 
fellow,  who  returned  to  Montreal  on  his  way  to  New 
York,  while  I  remained  in  Quebec  to  continue  later  on 
mine  to  Xew  England.  When  I  came  in  from  seeing 
him  off  in  a  calash  for  the  boat,  I  discovered  Bayard 
Taylor  in  the  reading-room,  where  he  sat  sunken  in 
what  seemed  a  somewhat  weary  muse.  He  did  not 
know  me,  or  even  notice  me,  though  I  made  several 
errands  in  and  out  of  the  reading-room  in  the  vain 
hope  that  he  might  do  so :  doubly  vain,  for  I  am  aware 
now  that  I  was  still  flown  with  the  pride  of  that  pretty 
experience  in  Montreal,  and  trusted  in  a  repetition 
of  something  like  it.  At  last,  as  no  chance  volunteered 
to  help  me,  I  mustered  courage  to  go  up  to  him  and 
name  myself,  and  say  I  had  once  had  the  pleasure 
of  meeting  him  at  Doctor  -  -'a  in  Columbus.  The 
poet  gave  no  sign  of  consciousness  at  the  sound  of  a 
name  which  I  had  fondly  begun  to  think  might  not  be 
so  all  unknown.  He  looked  up  with  an  unkindling 
eye,  and  asked,  Ah,  how  was  the  Doctor?  and  when  I 
had  reported  favorably  of  the  Doctor,  our  conversa 
tion  ended. 

He  was  probably  as  tired  as  he  looked,  and  he 
have  classed  me  with  that  multitude  all  over  the  coun 
try  who  had  shared  the  pleasure  I  professed  in  meet 
ing  him  before;  it  was  surely  my  fault  that  I  did  not 
speak  my  name  loud  enough  to  be  recognized    i 
spoke  it  at  all ;  but  the  courage  I  had  mustered  did  not 
quite  suffice  for  that.     In  after  years  he  assure 


LITEKARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

first  by  letter  and  then  by  word,  of  his  grief  for  an 
incident  which  I  can  only  recall  now  as  the  untoward 
beginning  of  a  cordial  friendship.  It  was  often  my 
privilege,  in  those  days,  as  reviewer  and  editor,  to  tes 
tify  my  sense  of  the  beautiful  things  he  did  in  so  many 
kinds  of  literature,  but  I  never  liked  any  of  them  bet 
ter  than  I  liked  him.  He  had  a  fervent  devotion  to 
his  art,  and  he  was  always  going  to  do  the  greatest 
things  in  it,  with  an  expectation  of  effect  that  never 
failed  him.  The  things  he  actually  did  were  none  of 
them  mean,  or  wanting  in  quality,  and  some  of  them 
are  of  a  lasting  charm  that  any  one  may  feel  who  will 
turn  to  his  poems;  but  no  doubt  many  of  them  fell 
short  of  his  hopes  of  them  with  the  reader.  It  was 
fine  to  meet  him  when  he  was  full  of  a  new  scheme ; 
he  talked  of  it  with  a  single-hearted  joy,  and  tried  to 
make  you  see  it  of  the  same  colors  and  proportions  it 
wore  to  his  eyes.  He  spared  no  toil  to  make  it  the 
perfect  thing  he  dreamed  it,  and  he  was  not  discour 
aged  by  any  disappointment  he  suffered  with  the  critic 
or  the  public. 

He  was  a  tireless  worker,  and  at  last  his  health 
failed  under  his  labors  at  the  newspaper  desk,  beneath 
the  midnight  gas,  when  he  should  long  have  rested 
from  such  labors.  I  believe  he  was  obliged  to  do  them 
through  one  of  those  business  fortuities  which  deform 
and  embitter  all  our  lives;  but  he  was  not  the  man  to 
spare  himself  in  any  case.  He  was  always  attempting 
new  things,  and  he  never  ceased  endeavoring  to  make 
his  scholarship  reparation  for  the  want  of  earlier  op 
portunity  and  training.  I  remember  that  I  met  him 
once  in  a  Cambridge  street  with  a  book  in  his  hand 
which  he  let  me  take  in  mine.  It  was  a  Greek  author, 
and  he  said  he  was  just  beginning  to  read  the  language 
at  fifty:  a  patriarchal  age  to  me  of  the  early  thirties! 


MY    FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

I  suppose  I  intimated  the  surprise  I  felt  at  his  taking 
it  up  so  late  in  the  day,  for  he  said,  with  charming 
seriousness,  "  Oh,  but  you  know,  I  expect  to  use  it  in 
the  other  world."  Yes,  that  made  it  worth  while,  I 
consented ;  but  was  he  sure  of  the  other  world  ?  "  As 
sure  as  I  am  of  this,"  he  said ;  and  I  have  always  kept 
the  impression  of  the  young  faith  which  spoke  in  his 
voice  and  was  more  than  his  words. 

I  saw  him  last  in  the  hour  of  those  tremendous 
adieux  which  were  paid  him  in  New  York  before  he 
sailed  to  be  minister  in  Germany.  It  was  one  of  the  most 
graceful  things  done  by  President  Hayes,  who,  most  of 
all  our  Presidents  after  Lincoln,  honored  himself  in  hon 
oring  literature  by  his  appointments,  to  give  that  place 
to  Bayard  Taylor.  There  was  no  one  more  fit  for  it,  and 
it  was  peculiarly  fit  that  he  should  be  so  distinguished 
to  a  people  who  knew  and  valued  his  scholarship  and 
the  service  he  had  done  German  letters.  He  was  as 
happy  in  it,  apparently,  as  a  man  could  be  in  anything 
here  below,  and  he  enjoyed  to  the  last  drop  the  many 
cups  of  kindness  pressed  to  his  lips  in  parting;  though 
I  believe  these  farewells,  at  a  time  when  he  was  al 
ready  fagged  with  work  and  excitement,  were  notably 
harmful  to  him,  and  helped  to  hasten  his  end.  Some 
of  us  who  were  near  of  friendship  went  down  to  see 
him  off  when  he  sailed,  as  the  dismal  and  futile  wont 
of  friends  is;  and  I  recall  the  kind,  great  fellow  stand 
ing  in  the  cabin,  amid  those  sad  flowers  that  heaped  the 
tables,  saying  good-by  to  one  after  another,  and  smiling 
fondly,  smiling  wearily,  upon  all.  There  was  cham 
pagne,  of  course,  and  an  odious  hilarity,  without  mea 
ing  and  without  remission,  till  the  warning  bell  chased 
us  ashore,  and  our  brave  poet  escaped  with  what  was 

of  his  life. 

9 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 


rv 

I  have  followed  him  far  from  the  moment  of  our 
first  meeting;  but  even  on  my  way  to  venerate  those 
i^ew  England  luminaries,  which  chiefly  drew  my  eyes, 
I  could  not  pay  a  less  devoir  to  an  author  who,  if  Cur 
tis  was  not,  was  chief  of  the  New  York  group  of  au 
thors  in  that  day.  I  distinguished  between  the  New- 
Englanders  and  the  New-Yorkers,  and  I  suppose  there 
is  no  question  but  our  literary  centre  was  then  in  Bos 
ton,  wherever  it  is,  or  is  not,  at  present.  But  I  thought 
Taylor  then,  and  I  think  him  now,  one  of  the  first  in 
our  whole  American  province  of  the  republic  of  letters, 
in  a  day  when  it  was  in  a  recognizably  flourishing 
state,  whether  we  regard  quantity  or  quality  in  the 
names  that  gave  it  lustre.  Lowell  was  then  in 
perfect  command  of  those  varied  forces  which  will 
long,  if  not  lastingly,  keep  him  in  memory  as  first 
among  our  literary  men,  and  master  in  more  kinds 
than  any  other  American.  Longfellow  was  in  the  ful 
ness  of  his  world-wide  fame,  and  in  the  ripeness  of  the 
beautiful  genius  which  was  not  to  know  decay  while 
life  endured.  Emerson  had  emerged  from  the  popu 
lar  darkness  which  had  so  long  held  him  a  hopeless 
mystic,  and  was  shining  a  lambent  star  of  poesy  and 
prophecy  at  the  zenith.  Hawthorne,  the  exquisite 
artist,  the  unrivalled  dreamer,  whom  we  still  always 
liken  this  one  and  that  one  to,  whenever  this  one  or 
that  one  promises  greatly  to  please  us,  and  still  leave 
without  a  rival,  without  a  companion,  had  lately  re 
turned  from  his  long  sojourn  abroad,  and  had  given 
us  the  last  of  the  incomparable  romances  which  the 
world  was  to  have  perfect  from  his  hand.  Doctor 
Holmes  had  surpassed  all  expectations  in  those  who 

10 


MY   FIKST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

most  admired  his  brilliant  humor  and  charming  poetry 
by  the  invention  of  a  new  attitude  if  not  a  new  sort 
in  literature.  The  turn  that  civic  affairs  had  taken 
was  favorable  to  the  widest  recognition  of  Whittier's 
splendid  lyrical  gift;  and  that  heart  of  fire,  doubly 
snow-bound  by  Quaker  tradition  and  Puritan  environ 
ment,  was  penetrating  every  generous  breast  with  its 
flamy  impulses,  and  fusing  all  wills  in  its  noble  pur 
pose.  Mrs.  Stowe,  who  far  outfamed  the  rest  as  the 
author  of  the  most  renowned  novel  ever  written,  was 
proving  it  no  accident  or  miracle  by  the  fiction  she 
was  still  writing. 

This  great  ISTew  England  group  might  be  enlarged 
perhaps  without  loss  of  quality  by  the  inclusion  of 
Thoreau,  who  came  somewhat  before  his  time,  and 
whose  drastic  criticism  of  our  expediential  and  mainly 
futile  civilization  would  find  more  intelligent  accept 
ance  now  than  it  did  then,  when  all  resentment  of  its 
defects  was  specialized  in  enmity  to  Southern  slavery. 
Doctor  Edward  Everett  Hale  belonged  in  this  group  too, 
by  virtue  of  that  humor,  the  most  inventive  and  the  most 
fantastic,  the  sanest,  the  sweetest,  the  truest,  which 
had  begun  to  find  expression  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly; 
and  there  a  wonderful  young  girl  had  written  a  series 
of  vivid  sketches  and  taken  the  heart  of  youth  every 
where  with  amaze  and  joy,  so  that  I  thought  it  would 
be  no  less  an  event  to  meet  Harriet  Prescott  than  to  me 
anv  of  those  I  have  named. 

I  expected  somehow  to  meet  them  all,  and 
ined  them  all  easily  accessible  in  the  office  of  the  At 
Untie  Monthly,  which  had  lately  adventured  m  the 
fine  air  of  high  literature  where  so  many  other  peri 
odical  had  gasped  and  died  before  it     The  best  of 
these,  hitherto,  and  better  even  than  the  A tlaniic    or 
some  reasons,  the  lamented  Putnam's  Maga*u*<  had 

11 


LITEEARY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

perished  of  inanition  at  New  York,  and  the  claim  of 
the  commercial  capital  to  the  literary  primacy  had 
passed  with  that  brilliant  venture.  New  York  had 
nothing  distinctive  to  show  for  American  literature 
but  the  decrepit  and  doting  Knickerbocker  Magazine. 
Harper  s  New  Monthly,  though  Curtis  had  already 
come  to  it  from  the  wreck  of  Putnam's,  and  it  had  long 
ceased  to  be  eclectic  in  material,  and  had  begun  to 
stand  for  native  work  in  the  allied  arts  which  it  has 
since  so  magnificently  advanced,  was  not  distinctively 
literary,  and  the  Weekly  had  just  begun  to  make  itself 
known.  The  Century,  Scribners,  the  Cosmopolitan, 
McClure's,  and  I  know  not  what  others,  were  still  un- 
imagined  by  five,  and  ten,  and  twenty  years,  and  the 
Galaxy  was  to  flash  and  fade  before  any  of  them 
should  kindle  its  more  effectual  fires.  The  Nation, 
which  was  destined  to  chastise  rather  than  nurture  our 
young  literature,  had  still  six  years  of  dreamless  po 
tentiality  before  it;  and  the  Nation  was  always  more 
Bostonian  than  New-Yorkish  by  nature,  whatever  it 
was  by  nativity. 

Philadelphia  had  long  counted  for  nothing  in  the 
literary  field.  Graham's  Magazine  at  one  time  show 
ed  a  certain  critical  force,  but  it  seemed  to  perish  of 
this  expression  of  vitality;  and  there  remained  Godey's 
Lady's  Boole  and  Peterson  s  Magazine,  publications 
really  incredible  in  their  insipidity.  In  the  South 
there  was  nothing  but  a  mistaken  social  ideal,  with  the 
moral  principles  all  standing  on  their  heads  in  defence 
of  slavery;  and  in  the  West  there  was  a  feeble  and 
foolish  notion  that  Western  talent  was  repressed  by 
Eastern  jealousy.  At  Boston  chiefly,  if  not  at  Boston 
alone,  was  there  a  vigorous  intellectual  life  among 
such  authors  as  I  have  named.  Every  young  writer 
was  ambitious  to  join  his  name  with  theirs  in  the 

12 


MY   FIKST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

Atlantic  Monthly,  and  in  the  lists  of  Ticknor  £ 
Fields,  who  were  literary  publishers  in  a  sense  such 
as  the  business  world  has  known  nowhere  else  before 
or  since.  Their  imprint  was  a  warrant  of  quality  to 
the  reader  and  of  immortality  to  the  author,  so  that 
if  I  could  have  had  a  book  issued  by  them  at  that 
day  I  should  now  be  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  an  un 
dying  fame. 


Such  was  the  literary  situation  as  the  passionate 
pilgrim  from  the  West  approached  his  holy  land  at 
Boston,  by  way  of  the  Grand  Trunk  Kailway  from 
Quebec  to  Portland.     I  have  no  recollection  of  a  sleep 
ing-car,  and  I  suppose  I  waked  and  watched  during  the 
whole  of  that  long,  rough  journey;  but  I  should  hardly 
have  slept  if  there  had  been  a  car  for  the  purpose, 
was  too  eager  to  see  what  New  England  was  like,  and 
too  anxious  not  to  lose  the  least  glimpse  of  it,  to  close 
my  eyes  after  I  crossed  the  border  at  Island  Pond. 
I  found  that  in  the  elm-dotted  levels  of  Maine  it  was 
very  like  the  Western  Keserve  in  northern  Ohio,  which 
is,  indeed,  a  portion  of  New  England  transferred  wil 
all  its  characteristic  features,  and  flattened  out  along 
the  lake  shore.     It  was  not  till  I  began  to  run  soutl 
ward  into  the  older  regions  of  the  country  that 
this  look,  and  became  gratefully  strange  to  me. 
never  had  the  effect  of  hoary  antiquity  which  I 
pected  of  a  country  settled  more  than  two  centu 
with  its  wood-built  farms  and  villages  it  looked  newer 
than  the  coal-smoked  brick  of  southern  Ohio     I  had 
prefigured  the  New  England  landscape  bare  of 
relieved  here  and  there  with  the  trees  of  orchard,,  or 
plantations;  but  I  found  apparently  as  much  *oc 

as  at  home. 

13 


LITEKAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

At  Portland  I  first  saw  the  ocean,  and  this  was  a 
sort  of  disappointment.  Tides  and  salt  water  I  had 
already  had  at  Quebec,  so  that  I  was  no  longer  on  the 
alert  for  them;  but  the  color  and  the  vastness  of  the 
sea  I  was  still  to  try  upon  my  vision.  When  I  stood 
on  the  Promenade  at  Portland  with  the  kind  young 
Unitarian  minister  whom  I  had  brought  a  letter  to, 
and  who  led  me  there  for  a  most  impressive  first  view 
of  the  ocean,  I  could  not  make  more  of  it  than  there 
was  of  Lake  Erie;  and  I  have  never  thought  the  color 
of  the  sea  comparable  to  the  tender  blue  of  the  lake. 
I  did  not  hint  my  disappointment  to  my  friend; 
I  had  too  much  regard  for  the  feelings  of  an  Eastern 
man  to  decry  his  ocean  to  his  face,  and  I  felt  besides 
that  it  would  be  vulgar  and  provincial  to  make  com 
parisons.  I  am  glad  now  that  I  held  my  tongue,  for 
that  kind  soul  is  no  longer  in  this  world,  and  I  should 
not  like  to  think  he  knew  how  far  short  of  my  expec 
tations  the  sea  he  was  so  proud  of  had  fallen.  I  went 
up  with  him  into  a  tower  or  belvedere  there  was  at 
hand;  and  when  he  pointed  to  the  eastern  horizon  and 
said,  Now  there  was  nothing  but  sea  between  us  and 
Africa,  I  pretended  to  expand  with  the  thought,  and 
began  to  sound  myself  for  the  emotions  which  I  ought 
to  have  felt  at  such  a  sight.  But  in  my  heart  I  was 
empty,  and  Heaven  knows  whether  I  saw  the  steamer 
which  the  ancient  mariner  in  charge  of  that  tower  in 
vited  me  to  look  at  through  his  telescope.  I  never 
could  see  anything  but  a  vitreous  glare  through  a  tele 
scope,  which  has  a  vicious  habit  of  dodging  about 
through  space,  and  failing  to  bring  down  anything 
of  less  than  planetary  magnitude. 

But  there  was  something  at  Portland  vastly  more 
to  me  than  seas  or  continents,  and  that  was  the  house 
where  Longfellow  was  born.  I  believe,  now,  I  did  not 

14 


MY   FIEST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

get  the  right  house,  but  only  the  house  he  went  to  live 
in  later ;  but  it  served,  and  I  rejoiced  in  it  with  a  rap 
ture  that  could  not  have  been  more  genuine  if  it  had 
been  the  real  birthplace  of  the  poet.  I  got  my  friend 
to  show  me 

" — the  breezy  dome  of  groves, 
The  shadows  of  Deering's  woods," 

because  they  were  in  one  of  Longfellow's  loveliest  and 
tenderest  poems;  and  I  made  an  errand  to  the  docks, 
for  the  sake  of  the 

" — black  wharves  and  the  slips, 

And  the  sea-tides  tossing  free, 
And  Spanish  sailors  with  bearded  lips, 
And  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships, 

And  the  magic  of  the  sea," 

mainly  for  the  reason  that  these  were  colors  and  shapes 
of  the  fond  vision  of  the  poet's  past.  I  am  in  doubt 
whether  it  was  at  this  time  or  a  later  time  that  I  went 
to  revere 

" — the  dead  captains  as  they  lay 
In  their  graves  o'erlooking  the  tranquil  bay, 
Where  they  in  battle  died," 

but  I  am  quite  sure  it  was  now  that  I  wandered  under 

"—the  trees  which  shadow  each  well-known  street, 
As  they  balance  up  and  down," 

for  when  I  was  next  in  Portland  the  great  fire  had 
swept  the  city  avenues  bare  of  most  of  those  beautiful 
elms,  whose  Gothic  arches  and  traceries  I  well  remen 

riPT* 

The  fact  is  that  in  those  days  I  was  bursting  with 
the  most  romantic  expectations  of  life  in  every  way, 
and  I  looked  at  the  whole  world  as  material  that  migh 
be  turned  into  literature,  or  that  might  be  associated 


LITERAKY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

with  it  somehow.  I  do  not  know  how  I  managed  to 
keep  these  preposterous  hopes  within  me,  but  perhaps 
the  trick  of  satirizing  them,  which  I  had  early  learnt, 
helped  me  to  do  it.  I  was  at  that  particular  moment 
resolved  above  all  things  to  see  things  as  Heinrich 
Heine  saw  them,  or  at  least  to  report  them  as  he  did, 
no  matter  how  I  saw  them;  and  I  went  about  framing 
phrases  to  this  end,  and  trying  to  match  the  objects  of 
interest  to  them  whenever  there  was  the  least  chance 
of  getting  them  together. 

VI 

I  do  not  know  how  I  first  arrived  in  Boston,  or 
whether  it  was  before  or  after  I  had  passed  a  day  or 
two  in  Salem.  As  Salem  is  on  the  way  from  Port 
land,  I  will  suppose  that  I  stopped  there  first,  and  ex 
plored  the  quaint  old  town  (quainter  then  than  now, 
but  still  quaint  enough)  for  the  memorials  of  Haw 
thorne  and  of  the  witches  which  united  to  form  the 
Salem  I  cared  for.  I  went  and  looked  up  the  House 
of  Seven  Gables,  and  suffered  an  unreasonable  disap 
pointment  that  it  had  not  a  great  many  more  of  them ; 
but  there  was  no  loss  in  the  death-warrant  of  Bridget 
Bishop,  with  the  sheriff's  return  of  execution  upon  it, 
which  I  found  at  the  Court-house;  if  anything,  the 
pathos  of  that  witness  of  one  of  the  cruelest  delusions 
in  the  world  was  rather  in  excess  of  my  needs;  I  could 
have  got  on  with  less.  I  saw  the  pins  which  the 
witches  were  sworn  to  have  thrust  into  the  afflicted 
children,  and  I  saw  Gallows  Hill,  where  the  hapless 
victims  of  the  perjury  were  hanged.  But  that  death- 
warrant  remained  the  most  vivid  color  of  my  experi 
ence  of  the  tragedy;  I  had  no  need  to  invite  myself  to 
a  sense  of  it,  and  it  is  still  like  a  stain  of  red  in  my 
memory. 

16 


MY    FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

The  kind  old  ship's  captain  whose  guest  I  was,  and 
who  was  transfigured  to  poetry  in  my  sense  by  the 
fact  that  he  used  to  voyage  to  the  African  coast  for 
palm-oil  in  former  days,  led  me  all  about  the  town, 
and  showed  me  the  Custom-house,  which  I  desired 
to  see  because  it  wras  in  the  preface  to  the  Scarlet  Let 
ter.  But  I  perceived  that  he  did  not  share  my  enthusi 
asm  for  the  author,  and  I  became  more  and  more  sen 
sible  that  in  Salem  air  there  was  a  cool  undercurrent 
of  feeling  about  him.  ISTo  doubt  the  place  was  not 
altogether  grateful  for  the  celebrity  his  romance  had 
given  it,  and  would  have  valued  more  the  uninterrupt 
ed  quiet  of  its  own  flattering  thoughts  of  itself;  but 
when  it  came  to  hearing  a  young  lady  say  she  knew  a 
girl  who  said  she  would  like  to  poison  Hawthorne, 
it  seemed  to  the  devout  young  pilgrim  from  the  West 
that  something  more  of  love  for  the  great  romancer 
would  not  have  been  too  much  for  him.  Hawthorne 
had  already  had  his  say,  however,  and  he  had  not  used 
his  native  town  with  any  great  tenderness.  Indeed, 
the  advantages  to  any  place  of  having  a  great  genius 
born  and  reared  in  its  midst  are  so  doubtful  that  it 
might  be  well  for  localities  designing  to  become  the 
birthplaces  of  distinguished  authors  to  think  twice 
about  it.  Perhaps  only  the  largest  capitals,  like  Lon 
don  and  Paris,  and  New  York  and  Chicago,  ought  to 
risk  it.  But  the  authors  have  an  unaccountable  per 
versity,  and  will  seldom  come  into  the  world  in  _tho 
large  cities,  which  are  alone  without  the  sense  of  neigh 
borhood,  and  the  personal  susceptibilities  so  unfavoi 
able  to  the  practice  of  the  literary  art. 

I  dare  say  that  it  was  owing  to  the  local  mdii 
to  her  greatest  name,  or  her  reluctance  from  it,  that 
got  a  clearer  impression  of  Salem  in  some  other  respe< 
than  I  should  have  had  if  I  had  been  invited  there  to 

17 


devote  myself  solely  to  the  associations  of  Hawthorne. 
For  the  first  time  I  saw  an  old  ISTew  England  town, 
I  do  not  know  but  the  most  characteristic,  and  took 
into  my  young  Western  consciousness  the  fact  of  a 
more  complex  civilization  than  I  had  yet  known.  My 
whole  life  had  been  passed  in  a  region  where  men  were 
just  beginning  ancestors,  and  the  conception  of  family 
was  very  imperfect.  Literature,  of  course,  was  full  of 
it,  and  it  was  not  for  a  devotee  of  Thackeray  to  be  theo 
retically  ignorant  of  its  manifestations;  but  I  had 
hitherto  carelessly  supposed  that  family  was  nowhere 
regarded  seriously  in  America  except  in  Virginia, 
where  it  furnished  a  joke  for  the  rest  of  the  nation. 
But  now  I  found  myself  confronted  with  it  in  its  an 
cient  houses,  and  heard  its  names  pronounced  with  a 
certain  consideration,  which  I  dare  say  was  as  much 
their  due  in  Salem  as  it  could  be  anywhere.  The 
names  were  all  strange,  and  all  indifferent  to  me,  but 
those  fine  square  wooden  mansions,  of  a  tasteful  archi 
tecture,  and  a  pale  buff-color,  withdrawing  themselves 
in  quiet  reserve  from  the  quiet  street,  gave  me  an  im 
pression  of  family  as  an  actuality  and  a  force  which 
I  had  never  had  before,  but  which  no  Westerner  can 
yet  understand  the  East  without  taking  into  account. 
I  do  not  suppose  that  I  conceived  of  family  as  a  fact 
of  vital  import  then;  I  think  I  rather  regarded  it  as 
a  color  to  be  used  in  any  aesthetic  study  of  the  local 
conditions.  I  am  not  sure  that  I  valued  it  more  even 
for  literary  purposes,  than  the  steeple  which  the  cap 
tain  pointed  out  as  the  first  and  last  thing  he  saw  when 
he  came  and  went  on  his  long  voyages,  or  than  the 
great  palm-oil  casks,  which  he  showed  me,  and  which 
I  related  to  the  tree  that  stood 

"  Auf  brennender  Felsenwand." 

IS 


MY    FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW    ENGLAND 

Whether  that  was  the  kind  of  palm  that  gives  the  oil, 
or  was  a  sort  only  suitable  to  be  the  dream  of  a  lonely 
fir-tree  in  the  North  on  a  cold  height,  I  am  in  doubt 
to  this  day. 

I  heard,  not  without  concern,  that  the  neighboring 
industry  of  Lynn  was  penetrating  Salem,   and  that 
the  ancient  haunt  of  the  witches  and  the  birthplace 
of  our  subtlest  and  somberest  wizard  was  becoming  a 
great    shoe-town ;  but  my  concern  was  less  for  its  mem 
ories  and  sensibilities  than  for  an  odious  duty  which  I 
owed  that  industry,  together  with  all  the  others  in  New 
England.     Before  I  left  home  I  had  promised  my  ear 
liest  publisher  that  I  would  undertake  to  edit,  or  com 
pile,  or  do  something  literary  to,  a  work  on  the  oper 
ation   of  the  more   distinctive  mechanical  inventions 
of  our  country,   which  he  had  conceived  the  notion 
of  publishing  by  subscription.     He  had  furnished  me, 
the  most  immechanical  of  humankind,  with  a  letter 
addressed  generally  to  the  great  mills  and  factories 
of  the  East,  entreating  their  managers  to  unfold  their 
mysteries  to  me  for  the  purposes  of  this  volume.     His 
letter  had  the  effect  of  shutting  up  some  of  them  like 
clams,  and  others  it  put  upon  their  guard  against  my 
researches,  lest  I  should  seize  the  secret  of  their  special 
inventions  and  publish  it  to  the  world.     I  could  not 
tell  the  managers  that  I  was  both  morally  and  mentally 
incapable  of  this;  that  they  might  have  explained  and 
demonstrated   the   properties   and   functions   of  their 
most    recondite    machinery,    and    upon    examinati< 
afterwards  found  me  guiltless  of  having  anything 
a  few  verses  of  Heine  or  Tennyson  or  Longfellow  i 
my  head      So  I  had  to  suffer  in  several  places 
their  unjust  anxieties,   and  from  my  own  wearmes 
of  their  ingenious  engines,  or  else  endure  the  pai 
of  a  bad  conscience  from  ignoring  them.     As 

3  19 


I  was  in  Canada  I  was  happy,  for  there  was  no  indus 
try  in  Canada  that  I  saw,  except  that  of  the  peasant 
girls,  in  their  Evangeline  hats  and  kirtles,  tossing 
the  hay  in  the  way-side  fields;  but  when  I  reached 
Portland  my  troubles  began.  I  went  with  that  young 
minister  of  whom  I  have  spoken  to  a  large  foundry, 
where  they  were  casting  some  sort  of  ironmongery, 
and  inspected  the  process  from  a  distance  beyond  any 
chance  spurt  of  the  molten  metal,  and  came  away  sadly 
uncertain  of  putting  the  rather  fine  spectacle  to  any 
practical  use.  A  manufactory  where  they  did  some 
thing  with  coal-oil  (which  I  now  heard  for  the  first 
time  called  kerosene)  refused  itself  to  me,  and  I  said 
to  myself  that  probably  all  the  other  industries  of  Port 
land  were  as  reserved,  and  I  would  not  seek  to  explore 
them;  but  when  I  got  to  Salem,  my  conscience  stirred 
again.  If  I  knew  that  there  were  shoe-shops  in  Salem, 
ought  not  I  to  go  and  inspect  their  processes?  This 
was  a  question  which  would  not  answer  itself  to  my 
satisfaction,  and  I  had  no  peace  till  I  learned  that  I 
could  see  shoemaking  much  better  at  Lynn,  and  that 
Lynn  was  such  a  little  way  from  Boston  that  I  could 
readily  run  up  there,  if  I  did  not  wish  to  examine  the 
shoe  machinery  at  once.  I  promised  myself  that  I 
would  run  up  from  Boston,  but  in  order  to  do  this  I 
must  first  go  to  Boston. 

VII 

I  am  supposing  still  tHat  I  saw  Salem  before  I  saw 
Boston,  but  however  the  fact  may  be,  I  am  sure  that  I 
decided  it  would  be  better  to  see  shoemaking  in  Lynn, 
where  I  really  did  see  it,  thirty  years  later.  For  the 
purposes  of  the  present  visit,  I  contented  myself  with 
looking  at  a  machine  in  Haverhill,  which  chewed  a 

20 


shoe  sole  full  of  pegs,  and  dropped  it  out  of  its  iron  jaws 
with  an  indifference  as  great  as  my  own,  and  probably 
as  little  sense  of  how  it  had  done  its  work.  I  may  be 
unjust  to  that  machine ;  Heaven  knows  I  would  not 
wrong  it ;  and  I  must  confess  that  my  head  had  no  room 
in  it  for  the  conception  of  any  machinery  but  the  myth 
ological,  which  also  I  despised,  in  my  revulsion  from 
the  eighteenth-century  poets  to  those  of  my  own  day. 

I  cannot  quite  make  out  after  the  lapse  of  so  many 
years  just  how  or  when  I  got  to  Haverhill,  or  whether 
it  was  before  or  after  I  had  been  in  Salem.  There  is  an 
apparitional  quality  in  my  presences,  at  this  point  or 
that,  in  the  dim  past ;  but  I  hope  that,  for  the  credit  of 
their  order,  ghosts  are  not  commonly  taken  with  sucli 
trivial  things  as  I  was.  For  instance,  in  Haverhill  I 
was  much  interested  by  the  sight  of  a  young  man,  com 
ing  gayly  down  the  steps  of  the  hotel  where  I  lodged,  in 
peg-top  trousers  so  much  more  peg-top  than  my  own  that 
I  seemed  to  be  wearing  mere  spring-bottoms  in  com 
parison;  and  in  a  day  when  every  one  who  respected 
himself  had  a  necktie  as  narrow  as  he  could  get,  this 
youth  had  one  no  wider  than  a  shoestring,  and  red  at 
that,  while  mine  measured  almost  an  inch,  and  was 
black.  To  be  sure,  he  was  one  of  a  band  of  negro  min 
strels,  who  were  to  give  a  concert  that  night,  and  he 
had  a  right  to  excel  in  fashion. 

I  will  suppose,  for  convenience'  sake,  that  I  visited 
Haverhill,  too,  before  I  reached  Boston :  somehow  that 
shoe-pegging  machine  must  come  in,  and  it  may  as  well 
come  in  here.    When  I  actually  found  myself  in  Boston, 
there  were  perhaps  industries  which  it  would  have  been 
well  for  me  to  celebrate,  but  I  either  made  believe  then 
were  none,  or  else  I  honestly  forgot  all  about  them.  In 
either  case  I  released  myself  altogether  to  the  literal 
and  historical  associations  of  the  place.    I  need  not  say 

21 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

that  I  gave  myself  first  to  the  first,  and  it  rather  sur 
prised  me  to  find  that  the  literary  associations  of  Bos 
ton  referred  so  largely  to  Cambridge.  I  did  not  know 
much  about  Cambridge,  except  that  it  was  the  seat  of 
the  university  where  Lowell  was,  and  Longfellow  had 
been,  professor;  and  somehow  I  had  not  realized  it  as 
the  home  of  these  poets.  That  was  rather  stupid  of  me, 
but  it  is  best  to  own  the  truth,  and  afterward  I  came  to 
know  the  place  so  well  that  I  may  safely  confess  my 
earlier  ignorance. 

I  had  stopped  in  Boston  at  the  Tremont  House, 
which  was  still  one  of  the  first  hostelries  of  the  country, 
and  I  must  have  inquired  my  way  to  Cambridge  there ; 
but  I  was  sceptical  of  the  direction  the  Cambridge 
horse-car  took  when  I  found  it,  and  I  hinted  to  the 
driver  my  anxieties  as  to  why  he  should  be  starting 
east  when  I  had  been  told  that  Cambridge  was  west  of 
Boston.  He  reassured  me  in  the  laconic  and  sarcastic 
manner  of  his  kind,  and  we  really  reached  Cambridge 
by  the  route  he  had  taken. 

The  beautiful  elms  that  shaded  great  part  of  the  way 
massed  themselves  in  the  "  groves  of  academe  "  at  the 
Square,  and  showed  pleasant  glimpses  of  "  Old  Har 
vard's  scholar  factories  red,"  then  far  fewer  than  now. 
It  must  have  been  in  vacation,  for  I  met  no  one  as  I 
wandered  through  the  college  yard,  trying  to  make  up 
my  mind  as  to  how  I  should  learn  where  Lowell  lived ; 
for  it  was  he  whom  I  had  come  to  find.  He  had  not 
only  taken  the  poems  I  sent  him,  but  he  had  printed 
two  of  them  in  a  single  number  of  the  Atlantic,  and  had 
even  written  me  a  little  note  about  them,  which  I  wore 
next  my  heart  in  my  breast  pocket  till  I  almost  wore  it 
out;  and  so  I  thought  I  might  fitly  report  myself  to 
him.  But  I  have  always  been  helpless  in  finding  my 
way,  and  I  was  still  depressed  by  my  failure  to  con- 

22 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW    ENGLAND 

vince  the  horse-car  driver  that  he  had  taken  the  wrong 
road.  I  let  several  people  go  by  without  questioning 
them,  and  those  I  did  ask  abashed  me  farther  by  not 
knowing  what  I  wanted  to  know.  When  I  had  remitted 
my  search  for  the  moment,  an  ancient  man,  with  an 
open  mouth  and  an  inquiring  eye,  whom  I  never  after 
wards  made  out  in  Cambridge,  addressed  me  with  a 
hospitable  offer  to  show  me  the  Washington  Elm.  I 
thought  this  would  give  me  time  to  embolden  myself 
for  the  meeting  with  the  editor  of  the  Atlantic  if  I 
should  ever  find  him,  and  I  went  with  that  kind  old 
man,  who  when  he  had  shown  me  the  tree,  and  the  spot 
where  Washington  stood  wrhen  he  took  command  of  the 
Continental  forces,  said  that  he  had  a  branch  of  it,  and 
that  if  I  would  come  to  his  house  with  him  he  would 
give  me  a  piece.  In  the  end,  I  meant  merely  to  flatter 
him  into  telling  me  where  I  could  find  Lowell,  but  I 
dissembled  my  purpose  and  pretended  a  passion  for  a 
piece  of  the  historic  elm,  and  the  old  man  led  me  not 
only  to  his  house  but  his  wood-house,  where  he  sawed 
me  off  a  block  so  generous  that  I  could  not  get  it  into 
my  pocket.  I  feigned  the  gratitude  which  I  could  sec 
that  he  expected,  and  then  I  took  courage  to  put  my 
question  to  him.  Perhaps  that  patriarch  lived  only  in 
the  past,  and  cared  for  history  and  not  literature.  He 
confessed  that  he  could  not  tell  me  where  to  find  Lowell ; 
but  he  did  not  forsake  me ;  he  set  forth  with  me  upon 
the  street  again,  and  let  no  man  pass  without  asking 
him.  In  the  end  we  met  one  who  was  able  to  say  where 
Mr.  Lowell  was,  and  I  found  him  at  last  in  a  little 
study  at  the  rear  of  a  pleasant,  old-fashioned  house  near 
the  Delta. 

Lowell  was  not  then  at  the  height  of 
had  just  reached  this  thirty  years  after,  when  he  died 
but  I  doubt  if  he  was  ever  after  a  greater  power  in  his 

23 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

own  country,  or  more  completely  embodied  the  literary 
aspiration  which  would  not  and  could  not  part  itself 
from  the  love  of  frqedom  and  the  hope  of  justice.  For 
the  sake  of  these  he  had  been  willing  to  suffer  the  re 
proach  which  followed  their  friends  in  the  earlier  days 
of  the  anti-slavery  struggle.  He  had  outlived  the  re 
proach  long  before;  but  the  fear  of  his  strength  re 
mained  with  those  who  had  felt  it,  and  he  had  not  made 
himself  more  generally  loved  by  the  Fable  for  Critics 
than  by  the  Biglow  Papers,  probably.  But  in  the 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal  and  the  Legend  of  Brittany 
he  had  won  a  liking  if  not  a  listening  far  wider  than  his 
humor  and  his  wit  had  got  him ;  and  in  his  lectures  on 
the  English  poets,  given  not  many  years  before  he  came 
to  the  charge  of  the  Atlantic,  he  had  proved  himself 
easily  the  wisest  and  finest  critic  in  our  language.  He 
was  already,  more  than  any  American  poet, 

"  Dowered  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn, 
The  love  of  love," 

and  he  held  a  place  in  the  public  sense  which  no  other 
author  among  us  has  held.  I  had  myself  never  been 
a  great  reader  of  his  poetry,  when  I  met  him,  though 
when  I  was  a  boy  of  ten  years  I  had  heard  my  father 
repeat  passages  from  the  Biglow  Papers  against  war 
and  slavery  and  the  war  for  slavery  upon  Mexico,  and 
later  I  had  read  those  criticisms  of  English  poetry,  and 
I  knew  Sir  Launfal  must  be  Lowell  in  some  sort;  but 
my  love  for  him  as  a  poet  was  chiefly  centred  in  my  love 
for  his  tender  rhyme,  Auf  Wiedersehen,  which  I  can 
not  yet  read  without  something  of  the  young  pathos  it 
first  stirred  in  me.  I  knew  and  felt  his  greatness  some 
how  apart  from  the  literary  proofs  of  it;  he  ruled  my 
fancy  and  held  my  allegiance  as  a  character,  as  a  man ; 
and  I  am  neither  sorry  nor  ashamed  that  I  was  abashed 

24 


MY   FIEST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

when  I  first  came  into  his  presence;  and  that  in  spite 
of  his  words  of  welcome  I  sat  inwardly  quaking  before 
him.  He  was  then  forty-one  years  old,  and  nineteen 
my  senior,  and  if  there  had  been  nothing  else  to  awe 
me,  I  might  well  have  been  quelled  by  the  disparity  of 
our  ages.  But  I  have  always  been  willing  and  even 
eager  to  do  homage  to  men  who  have  done  something, 
and  notably  to  men  who  have  done  something  in  the 
sort  I  wished  to  do  something  in,  myself.  I  could 
never  recognize  any  other  sort  of  superiority;  but  that 
I  am  proud  to  recognize ;  and  I  had  before  Lowell  some 
such  feeling  as  an  obscure  subaltern  might  have  before 
his  general.  He  was  by  nature  a  bit  of  a  disciplinarian, 
and  the  effect  was  from  him  as  well  as  in  me;  I  dare 
say  he  let  me  feel  whatever  difference  there  was  as 
helplessly  as  I  felt  it.  At  the  first  encounter  with 
people  he  always  was  apt  to  have  a  certain  frosty  shy 
ness,  a  smiling  cold,  as  from  the  long,  high-sunned  win 
ters  of  his  Puritan  race;  he  was  not  quite  himself  till 
he  had  made  you  aware  of  his  quality:  then  no  one 
could  be  sweeter,  tenderer,  warmer  than  he;  then  he 
made  you  free  of  his  whole  heart ;  but  you  must  be  his 
captive  before  he  could  do  that.  His  whole  personality 
had  now  an  instant  charm  for  me;  I  could  not  keep 
my  eyes  from  those  beautiful  eyes  of  his,  which  had  a 
certain  starry  serenity,  and  looked  out  so  purely  from 
under  his  white  forehead,  shadowed  with  auburn  hair 
untouched  by  age;  or  from  the  smile  that  shaped  the 
auburn  beard,  and  gave  the  face  in  its  form  and  « 
the  Christ-look  which  Page's  portrait  has  flattered  in  il 
His  voice  had  as  great  a  fascination  for  me  as  his 
face  The  vibrant  tenderness  and  the  crisp  clearnes 
the  tones,  the  perfect  modulation,  the  clear  enuncia 
the  exquisite  accent,  the  elect  diction- 
enough  then  to  know  that  these  were  the  gifts,  t 

25 


were  the  graces,  of  one  from  whose  tongue  our  rough 
English  came  music  such  as  I  should  never  hear  from 
any  other.  In  this  speech  there  was  nothing  of  our 
slipshod  American  slovenliness,  but  a  truly  Italian 
conscience  and  an  artistic  sense  of  beauty  in  the  in 
strument. 

I  saw,  before  he  sat  down  across  his  writing-table 
from  me,  that  he  was  not  far  from  the  medium  height ; 
but  his  erect  carriage  made  the  most  of  his  five  feet  and 
odd  inches.  He  had  been  smoking  the  pipe  he  loved, 
and  he  put  it  back  in  his  mouth,  presently,  as  if  he 
found  himself  at  greater  ease  with  it,  when  he  began 
to  chat,  or  rather  to  let  me  show  what  manner  of  young 
man  I  was  by  giving  me  the  first  word.  I  told  him  of 
the  trouble  I  had  in  finding  him,  and  I  could  not  help 
dragging  in  something  about  Heine's  search  for  Borne, 
when  he  went  to  see  him  in  Frankfort;  but  I  felt  at 
once  this  was  a  false  start,  for  Lowell  was  such  an  im 
passioned  lover  of  Cambridge,  which  was  truly  his 
patria.  in  the  Italian  sense,  that  it  must  have  hurt  him 
to  be  unknown  to  any  one  in  it ;  he  said,  a  little  dryly, 
that  he  should  not  have  thought  I  would  have  so  much 
difficulty;  but  he  added,  forgivingly,  that  this  was  not 
his  own  house,  which  he  was  out  of  for  the  time.  Then 
he  spoke  to  me  of  Heine,  and  when  I  showed  my  ardor 
for  him,  he  sought  to  temper  it  with  some  judicious 
criticisms,  and  told  me  that  he  had  kept  the  first  poem 
I  sent  him,  for  the  long  time  it  had  been  unacknowl 
edged,  to  make  sure  that  it  was  not  a  translation.  He 
asked  me  about  myself,  and  my  name,  and  its  Welsh 
origin,  and  seemed  to  find  the  vanity  I  had  in  this 
harmless  enough.  When  I  said  I  had  tried  hard  to  be 
lieve  that  I  was  at  least  the  literary  descendant  of  Sir 
James  Howels,  he  corrected  me  gently  with  "  James 
Howel,"  and  took  down  a  volume  of  the  Familiar  Let' 

2Q 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

ters  from  the  shelves  behind  him  to  prove  me  wrong. 
This  was  always  his  habit,  as  I  found  afterwards: 
when  he  quoted  anything  from  a  book  he  liked  to  get 
it  and  read  the  passage  over,  as  if  he  tasted  a  kind  of 
hoarded  sweetness  in  the  words.  It  visibly  vexed  him 
if  they  showed  him  in  the  least  mistaken ;  biit 

"  The  love  he  bore  to  learning  was  at  fault " 

for  this  foible,  and  that  other  of  setting  people  right  if 
he  thought  them  wrong.  I  could  not  assert  myself 
against  his  version  of  Howel's  name,  for  my  edition  of 
his  letters  was  far  away  in  Ohio,  and  I  was  obliged  to 
own  that  the  name  was  spelt  in  several  different  ways 
in  it.  He  perceived,  no  doubt,  why  I  had  chosen  the 
form  likest  my  own,  with  the  title  which  the  pleasant 
old  turncoat  ought  to  have  had  from  the  many  masters 
he  served  according  to  their  many  minds,  but  never 
had  except  from  that  erring  edition.  He  did  not  af 
flict  me  for  it,  though;  probably  it  amused  him  too 
much ;  he  asked  me  about  the  West,  and  when  he  found 
that  I  was  as  proud  of  the  West  as  I  was  of  Wales,  ho 
seemed  even  better  pleased,  and  said  he  had  always 
fancied  that  human  nature  was  laid  out  on  rather  a 
larger  scale  there  than  in  the  East,  but  he  had  seen  very 
little  of  the  West.  In  my  heart  I  did  not  think  this  then, 
and  I  do  not  think  it  now ;  human  nature  has  had  more 
ground  to  spread  over  in  the  West ;  that  is  all ;  but  "  it 
was  not  for  me  to-  bandy  words  with  my  sovereign." 
He  said  he  liked  to  hear  of  the  differences  between  the 
different  sections,  for  what  we  had  most  to  fear  in  our 
country  was  a  wearisome  sameness  of  type. 

He  did  not  say  now,  or  at  any  other  time  during  the 
many  years  I  knew  him,  any  of  those  slighting  things 
of  the  West  which  I  had  so  often  to  suffer  from  Eastern 
people,  but  suffered  me  to  praise  it  all  I  would. 

27 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

asked  me  what  way  I  had  taken  in  coming  to  New  Eng« 
land,  and  when  I  told  him,  and  began  to  rave  of  the 
beauty  and  quaintness  of  French  Canada,  and  to  pour 
out  my  joy  in  Quebec,  he  said,  with  a  smile  that  had 
now  lost  all  its  frost,  Yes,  Quebec  was  a  bit  of  the 
seventeenth  century;  it  was  in  many  ways  more  French 
than  France,  and  its  people  spoke  the  language  of  Vol 
taire,  with  the  accent  of  Voltaire's  time. 

I  do  not  remember  what  else  he  talked  of,  though 
once  I  remembered  it  with  what  I  believed  an  inef 
faceable  distinctness.  I  set  nothing  of  it  down  at  the 
time ;  I  was  too  busy  with  the  letters  I  was  writing  for 
a  Cincinnati  paper ;  and  I  was  severely  bent  upon  keep 
ing  all  personalities  out  of  them.  This  was  very  well, 
but  I  could  wish  now  that  I  had  transgressed  at  least 
so  far  as  to  report  some  of  the  things  that  Lowell  said ; 
for  the  paper  did  not  print  my  letters,  and  it  would 
have  been  perfectly  safe,  and  very  useful  for  the  present 
purpose.  But  perhaps  he  did  not  say  anything  very 
memorable;  to  do  that  you  must  have  something  posi 
tive  in  your  listener ;  and  I  was  the  mere  response,  the 
hollow  echo,  that  youth  must  be  in  like  circumstances. 
I  was  all  the  time  afraid  of  wearing  my  welcome  out, 
and  I  hurried  to  go  when  I  would  so  gladly  have  staid. 
,1  do  not  remember  where  I  meant  to  go,  or  why  he 
should  have  undertaken  to  show  me  the  way  across-lots, 
but  this  was  what  he  did ;  and  when  we  came  to  a  fence, 
which  I  clambered  grace] essly  over,  he  put  his  hands 
on  the  top,  and  tried  to  take  it  at  a  bound.  He  tried 
twice,  and  then  laughed  at  his  failure,  but  not  with 
any  great  pleasure,  and  he  was  not  content  till  a 
third  trial  carried  him  across.  Then  he  said,  "  I 
commonly  do  that  the  first  time,"  as  if  it  were  a 
frequent  habit  with  him,  while  I  remained  discreetly 
silent,  and  for  that  moment  at  least  felt  myself  the 

28 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

elder  of  the  man  who  had  so  much  of  the  boy  in  him 
He  had,  indeed,  much  of  the  boy  in  him  to  the  last,  and 
he  parted  with  each  hour  of  his  youth  reluctantly  pa 
thetically. 

VIII 

We  walked  across  what  must  have  been  Jarvis  Field 
to  what  must  have  been  North  Avenue,  and  there  he  left 
me.  But  before  he  let  me  go  he  held  my  hand  while  he 
could  say  that  he  wished  me  to  dine  with  him ;  only,  he 
was  not  in  his  own  house,  and  he  would  ask  me  to  dine 
with  him  at  the  Parker  House  in  Boston,  and  would 
send  me  word  of  the  time  later. 

I  suppose  I  may  have  spent  part  of  the  intervening 
time  in  viewing  the  wonders  of  Boston,  and  visiting  the 
historic  scenes  and  places  in  it  and  about  it.  I  certainly 
went  over  to  Charlestown,  and  ascended  Bunker  Hill 
Monument,  and  explored  the  navy-yard,  where  the  im 
memorial  man-of-war  begun  in  Jackson's  time  was  then 
silently  stretching  itself  under  its  long  shed  in  a  poetic 
arrest,  as  if  the  failure  of  the  appropriation  for  its  com 
pletion  had  been  some  kind  of  enchantment.  In  Bos 
ton,  I  early  presented  my  letter  of  credit  to  the  pub 
lisher  it  was  drawn  upon,  not  that  I  needed  money  at 
the  moment,  but  from  a  young  eagerness  to  see  if  it 
would  be  honored;  and  a  literary  attache  of  the  house 
kindly  went  about  with  me,  and  showed  me  the  life  of 
the  city.  A  great  city  it  seemed  to  me  then,  and  a  seeth 
ing  vortex  of  business  as  well  as  a  whirl  of  gayety,  as 
I  saw  it  in  Washington  Street,  and  in  a  promenade  con 
cert  at  Copeland's  restaurant  in  Tremont  Row.  Proba 
bly  I  brought  some  idealizing  force  to  bear  upon  it,  for 
I  was  not  all  so  strange  to  the  world  as  I  must  seem ; 
perhaps  I  accounted  for  quality  as  well  as  quantity  in 
my  impressions  of  the  Xew  England  metropolis,  and 

29. 


LITERAKY  EKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

aggrandized  it  in  the  ratio  of  its  literary  importance. 
It  seemed  to  me  old,  even  after  Quebec,  and  very  likely 
I  credited  the  actual  town  with  all  the  dead  and  gone 
Bostonians  in  my  sentimental  census.  If  I  did  not,  it 
was  no  fault  of  my  cicerone,  who  thought  even  more 
of  the  city  he  showed  me  than  I  did.  I  do  not  know 
now  who  he  was,  and  I  never  saw  him  after  I  came  to 
live  there,  with  any  certainty  that  it  was  he,  though  I 
was  often  tormented  with  the  vision  of  a  spectacled 
face  like  his,  but  not  like  enough  to  warrant  me  in  ad 
dressing  him. 

He  became  part  of  that  ghostly  Boston  of  my  first 
visit,  which  would  sometimes  return  and  possess  again 
the  city  I  came  to  know  so  familiarly  in  later  years, 
and  to  be  so  passionately  interested  in.  Some  color  of 
my  prime  impressions  has  tinged  the  fictitious  experi 
ences  of  people  in  my  books,  but  I  find  very  little  of  it 
in  my  memory.  This  is  like  a  web  of  frayed  old  lace, 
which  I  have  to  take  carefully  into  my  hold  for  fear  of 
its  fragility,  and  make  out  as  best  I  can  the  figure  once 
so  distinct  in  it.  There  are  the  narrow  streets,  stretch 
ing  saltwards  to  the  docks,  which  I  haunted  for  their 
quaintness,  and  there  is  Faneuil  Hall,  which  I  cared 
to  see  so  much  more  because  Wendell  Phillips  had 
spoken  in  it  than  because  Otis  and  Adams  had.  There 
is  the  old  Colonial  House,  and  there  is  the  State  House, 
which  I  dare  say  I  explored,  with  the  Common  sloping 
before  it.  There  is  Beacon  Street,  with  the  Hancock 
House  where  it  is  incredibly  no  more,  and  there  are 
the  beginnings  of  Commonwealth  Avenue,  and  the 
other  streets  of  the  Back  Bay,  laid  out  with  their  base 
ments  left  hollowed  in  the  made  land,  which  the  gravel 
trains  were  yet  making  out  of  the  westward  hills.  There 
is  the  Public  Garden,  newly  planned  and  planted,  but 
without  the  massive  bridge  destined  to  make  so  ungrate- 

30 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

fully  little  of  the  lake  that  occasioned  it.  But  it  is  all 
very  vague,  and  I  could  easily  believe  now  that  it  Avas 
some  one  else  who  saw  it  then  in  my  place. 

I  think  that  I  did  not  try  to  see  Cambridge  the  same 
day  that  I  saw  Lowell,  but  wisely  came  back  to  my 
hotel  in  Boston,  and  tried  to  realize  the  fact.  I  went 
out  another  day,  with  an  acquaintance  from  Ohio,  whom 
I  ran  upon  in  the  street.  We  went  to  Mount  Auburn 
together,  and  I  viewed  its  monuments  with  a  reverence 
which  I  dare  say  their  artistic  quality  did  not  merit. 
But  I  am  not  sorry  for  this,  for  perhaps  they  are  not 
quite  so  bad  as  some  people  pretend.  The  Gothic  chapel 
of  the  cemetery,  unstoried  as  it  was,  gave  me,  with  its 
half-dozen  statues  standing  or  sitting  about,  an  emotion 
such  as  I  am  afraid  I  could  not  receive  now  from  the 
Acropolis,  Westminster  Abbey,  and  Santa  Croce  in  one. 
I  tried  hard  for  some  assthetic  sense  of  it,  and  I  made 
believe  that  I  thought  this  thing  and  that  thing  in  the 
place  moved  me  with  its  fitness  or  beauty ;  but  the  truth 
is  that  I  had  no  taste  in  anything  but  literature,  and 
did  not  feel  the  effect  I  would  so  willingly  have  experi 
enced. 

I  did  genuinely  love  the  elmy  quiet  of  the  dear  old 
Cambridge  streets,  though,  and  I  had  a  real  and  instant 
pleasure  'in  the  yellow  colonial  houses,  with  their  white 
corners   and  casements   and  their  green  blinds,  that 
lurked  behind  the  shrubbery  of  the  avenue  I  passed 
through  to  Mount  Auburn.    The  most  beautiful  among 
them  was  the  most  interesting  for  me,  for  it  was  the 
house  of  Longfellow;  my  companion,  who  had  seen 
before,  pointed  it  out  to  me  with  an  air  of  custom   and 
I  would  not  let  him  see  that  I  valued  the  first  sight  , 
it  as  I  did.    I  had  hoped  that  somehow  I  might  be  £ 
favored  as  to  see  Longfellow  himself,  but  when  I  askc 
about  him  of  those  who  knew,  they  said,     Oh,  he  i 

31 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Nahant,"  and  I  thought  that  Nahant  must  be  a  great 
way  off,  and  at  any  rate  I  did  not  feel  authorized  to  go 
to  him  there.  Neither  did  I  go  to  see  the  author  of  The 
Amber  Gocfo,who  lived  at  Newburyport,  I  was  told,  as  if 
I  should  know  where  Newburyport  was ;  I  did  not  know, 
and  I  hated  to  ask.  Besides,  it  did  not  seem  so  simple 
as  it  had  seemed  in  Ohio,  to  go  and  see  a  young  lady 
simply  because  I  was  infatuated  with  her  literature; 
even  as  the  envoy  of  all  the  infatuated  young  people  of 
Columbus,  I  could  not  quite  do  this;  and  when  I  got 
home,  I  had  to  account  for  my  failure  as  best  I  could. 
Another  failure  of  mine  was  the  sight  of  Whittier, 
which  I  then  very  much  longed  to  have.  They  said, 
"  Oh,  Whittier  lives  at  Amesbury,"  but  that  put  him  at 
an  indefinite  distance,  and  without  the  introduction  I 
never  would  ask  for,  I  found  it  impossible  to  set  out  in 
quest  of  him.  In  the  end,  I  saw  no  one  in  New  Eng 
land  whom  I  was  not  presented  to  in  the  regular  way, 
except  Lowell,  whom  I  thought  I  had  a  right  to  call 
upon  in  my  quality  of  contributor,  and  from  the 
acquaintance  I  had  with  him  by  letter.  I  neither  praise 
nor  blame  myself  for  this ;  it  was  my  shyness  that  with 
held  me  rather  than  my  merit.  There  is  really  no  harm 
in  seeking  the  presence  of  a  famous  man,  and  I  doubt  if 
the  famous  man  resents  the  wish  of  people  to  look  upon 
him  without  some  measure,  great  or  little,  of  affectation. 
There  are  bores  everywhere,  but  he  is  likelier  to  find 
them  in  the  wonted  figures  of  society  than  in  those 
young  people,  or  old  people,  who  come  to  him  in  the 
love  of  what  he  has  done.  I  am  well  aware  how  furi 
ously  Tennyson  sometimes  met  his  worshippers,  and 
how  insolently  Carlyle,  but  I  think  these  facts  are  little 
specks  in  their  sincerity.  Our  own  gentler  and  honester 
celebrities  did  not  forbid  approach,  and  I  have  known 
some  of  them  caress  adorers  who  seemed  hardly  worthy 

32 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

of  their  kindness ;  but  that  was  hetter  than  to  have  hurt 
any  sensitive  spirit  who  had  ventured  too  far,  by  the 
rules  that  govern  us  with  common  men. 


IX 


My  business  relations  were  with  the  house  that  so 
promptly  honored  my  letter  of  credit.  This  house 
had  published  in  the  East  the  campaign  life  of  Lincoln 
which  I  had  lately  written,  and  I  dare  say  would  have 
published  the  volume  of  poems  I  had  written  earlier 
with  my  friend  Piatt,  if  there  had  been  any  public 
for  it;  at  least,  I  saw  large  numbers  of  the  book  on 
the  counters.  But  all  my  literary  affiliations  were 
with  Ticknor  &  Fields,  and  it  was  the  Old  Corner 
Book-Store  on  Washington  Street  that  drew  my  heart 
as  soon  as  I  had  replenished  my  pocket  in  Cornhill. 
After  verifying  the  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  I 
wished  to  verify  its  publishers,  and  it  very  fitly  hap 
pened  that  when  I  was  shown  into  Mr.  Fields's  little 
room  at  the  back  of  the  store,  with  its  window  looking 
upon  School  Street,  and  its  scholarly  keeping  in  books 
and  prints,  he  had  just  got  the  magazine  sheets  of  a 
poem  of  mine  from  the  Cambridge  printers.  He  was 
then  lately  from  abroad,  and  he  had  the  zest  for  Ameri 
can  things  which  a  foreign  sojourn  is  apt  to  renew  in 
us,  though  I  did  not  know  this  then,  and  could  not  ac 
count  for  it  in  the  kindness  he  expressed  for  my  poem. 
He  introduced  me  to  Mr.  Ticknor,  who  I  fancied  had 
not  read  my  poem;  but  he  seemed  to  know  what  it  was 
from  the  junior  partner,  and  he  asked  me  whether  J 
had  been  paid  for  it.  I  confessed  that  I  had  not  and 
then  he  got  out  a  chamois-leather  bag,  and  took  froi 
it  five  half-eagles  in  gold  and  laid  them  on  the  grec 
cloth  top  of  the  desk,  in  much  the  shape  and  of  much 

33 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

the  size  of  the  Great  Bear.  I  have  never  since  felt 
myself  paid  so  lavishly  for  any  literary  work,  though 
I  have  had  more  for  a  single  piece  than  the  twenty-five 
dollars  that  dazzled  me  in  this  constellation.  The 
publisher  seemed  aware  of  the  poetic  character  of  the 
transaction;  he  let  the  pieces  lie  a  moment,  before  he 
gathered  them  up  and  put  them  into  my  hand,  and 
said,  "  I  always  think  it  is  pleasant  to  have  it  in  gold." 
But  a  terrible  experience  with  the  poem  awaited  me, 
and  quenched  for  the  moment  all  my  pleasure  and 
pride.  It  was  The  Pilot's  Story,  which  I  suppose  has 
had  as  much  acceptance  as  anything  of  mine  in  verse 
(I  do  not  boast  of  a  vast  acceptance  for  it),  and  I  had 
attempted  to  treat  in  it  a  phase  of  the  national  trag 
edy  of  slavery,  as  I  had  imagined  it  on  a  Mississippi 
steamboat.  A  young  planter  has  gambled  away  the 
slave-girl  who  is  the  mother  of  his  child,  and  when 
he  tells  her,  she  breaks  out  upon  him  with  the  demand : 

"  What  will  you  say  to  our    boy  when  he  cries  for  me,  there  in 
Saint  Louis?" 

I  had  thought  this  very  well,  and  natural  and  sim 
ple,  but  a  fatal  proof-reader  had  not  thought  it  well 
enough,  or  simple  and  natural  enough,  and  he  had 
made  the  line  read: 

"  What  will  you   say  to  our  boy  when  he   cries  for  '  Ma,'  there 
in  Saint  Louis?" 

He  had  even  had  the  inspiration  to  quote  the  word 
he  preferred  to  the  one  I  had  written,  so  that  there  was 
no  merciful  possibility  of  mistaking  it  for  a  misprint, 
and  my  blood  froze  in  my  veins  at  sight  of  it.  Mr. 
Fields  had  given  me  the  sheets  to  read  while  he  looked 
over  some  letters,  and  he  either  felt  the  chill  of  my 
horror,  or  I  made  some  sign  or  sound  of  dismay  that 
caught  his  notice,  for  he  looked  round  at  me.  I  could 


MY   FIKST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

only  show  him  the  passage  with  a  gasp.  I  dare  say  he 
might  have  liked  to  laugh,  for  it  was  cruelly  funny, 
but  he  did  not;  he  was  concerned  for  the  magazine 
as  well  as  for  me.  lie  declared  that  when  he  first  read 
the  line  he  had  thought  I  could  not  have  written  it  so, 
and  he  agreed  with  me  that  it  would  kill  the  poem  if 
it  came  out  in  that  shape.  He  instantly  set  about  re 
pairing  the  mischief,  so  far  as  could  be.  He  found 
that  the  whole  edition  of  that  sheet  had  been  printed, 
and  the  air  blackened  round  me  again,  lighted  up  here 
and  there  with  baleful  flashes  of  the  newspaper  wit  at 
my  cost,  which  I  provisioned  in  my  misery;  I  knew 
what  I  should  have  said  of  such  a  thing  myself,  if  it 
had  been  another's.  But  the  publisher  at  once  decided 
that  the  sheet  must  be  reprinted,  and  I  went  away 
weak  as  if  in  the  escape  from  some  deadly  peril. 
Afterwards  it  appeared  that  the  line  had  passed  the 
first  proof-reader  as  I  wrote  it,  but  that  the  final  reader 
had  entered  so  sympathetically  into  the  realistic  inten 
tion  of  my  poem  as  to  contribute  the  modification 
which  had  nearly  been  my  end. 


As  it  fell  out,  I  lived  without  farther  difficulty  to 
the  day  and  hour  of  the  dinner  Lowell  made  for  me ; 
arid  I  really  think,  looking  at  myself  impersonally, 
and  remembering  the  sort  of  young  fellow  I  was,  that 
it  would  have  been  a  great  pity  if  I  had  not 
dinner  was  at  the  old-fashioned  Boston  hour  of  two, 
and  the  table  was  laid  for  four  people  in  some  1 
upper  room  at  Parker's,  which  I  was  never  afterwards 
able  to  make  sure  of.     Lowell  was  already  there  when  I 
came,  and  he  presented  me,  to  my  inexpressible  delight 
and  surprise,  to  Dr.  Holmes,  who  was  there  with  him. 
4  35 


LITEEAEY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Holmes  was  in  the  most  brilliant  hour  of  that  wonder 
ful  second  youth  which  his  fame  flowered  into  long  after 
the  world  thought  he  had  completed  the  cycle  of  his 
literary  life.  He  had  already  received  full  recogni 
tion  as  a  poet  of  delicate  wit,  nimble  humor,  airy  imag 
ination,  and  exquisite  grace,  when  the  Autocrat  papers 
advanced  his  name  indefinitely  beyond  the  bounds 
which  most  immortals  would  have  found  range  enough. 
The  marvel  of  his  invention  was  still  fresh  in  the 
minds  of  men,  and  time  had  not  dulled  in  any  measure 
the  sense  of  its  novelty.  His  readers  all  fondly  iden- 
ified  him  with  his  work;  and  I  fully  expected  to  find 
myself  in  the  Autocrat's  presence  when  I  met  Dr. 
Holmes,  But  the  fascination  was  none  the  less  for 
that  reason;  and  the  winning  smile,  the  wise  and  hu 
morous  glance,  the  whole  genial  manner  was  as  impor 
tant  to  me  as  if  I  had  foreboded  something  altogether 
different.  I  found  him  physically  of  the  Napoleonic 
height  which  spiritually  overtops  the  Alps,  and  I  could 
look  into  his  face  without  that  unpleasant  effort  which 
giants  of  inferior  mind  so  often  cost  the  man.  of  five 
feet  four. 

A  little  while  after,  Fields  came  in,  and  then  our 
number  and  my  pleasure  were  complete. 

Nothing  else  so  richly  satisfactory,  indeed,  as  the 
whole  affair  could  have  happened  to  a  like  youth  at 
such  a  point  in  his  career;  and  when  I  sat  down  with 
Doctor  Holmes  and  Mr.  Fields,  on  Lowell's  right,  I 
felt  through  and  through  the  dramatic  perfection  of 
the  event.  The  kindly  Autocrat  recognized  some  such 
quality  of  it  in  terms  which  were  not  the  less  precious 
and  gracious  for  their  humorous  excess.  I  have  no 
reason  to  think  that  he  had  yet  read  any  of  my  poor 
verses,  or  had  me  otherwise  than  wholly  on  trust  from 
Lowell;  but  he  leaned  over  towards  his  host,  and  said, 

aa 


MY    FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

with  a  laughing  look  at  me,  "Well,  James,  this  is 
something  like  the  apostolic  succession ;  this  is  the  lay 
ing  on  of  hands."  I  took  his  sweet  and  caressing  irony 
as  he  meant  it;  but  the  charm  of  it  went  to  my  head 
long  before  any  drop  of  wine,  together  with  the  charm 
of  hearing  him  and  Lowell  calling  each  other  James 
and  Wendell,  and  of  finding  them  still  cordially  boys 
together. 

I  would  gladly  have  glimmered  before  those  great 
lights  in  the  talk  that  followed,  if  I  could  have  thought 
of  anything  brilliant  to  say,  but  I  could  not,  and  so  I 
let  them  shine  without  a  ray  of  reflected  splendor  from 
me.  It  was  such  talk  as  I  had,  of  course,  never  heard 
before,  and  it  is  not  saying  enough  to  say  that  I  have 
never  heard  such  talk  since  except  from  these  two  men. 
It  was  as  light  and  kind  as  it  was  deep  and  true,  and  it 
ranged  over  a  hundred  things,  with  a  perpetual  sparkle 
of  Doctor  Holmes's  wit,  and  the  constant  glow  of  Low 
ell's  incandescent  sense.  From  time  to  time  Fields  camo 
in  with  one  of  his  delightful  stories  (sketches  of  char 
acter  they  were,  which  he  sometimes  did  not  mind  cari 
caturing),  or  with  some  criticism  of  the  literary  situa 
tion  from  his  stand-point  of  both  lover  and  publisher  of 
books.  I  heard  fames  that  I  had  accepted  as  proofs  of 
power  treated  as  factitious,  and  witnessed  a  frankness 
concerning  authorship,  far  and  near,  that  I  had  not 
dreamed  of  authors  using.  When  Doctor  Holmes  under 
stood  that  I  wrote  for  the  Saturday  Press,  which  was 
running  amuck  among  some  Bostonian  immortalities  of 
the  day,  he  seemed  willing  that  I  should  know  they 
were  not  thought  so  very  undying  in  Boston,  and  that  I 
should  not  take  the  notion  of  a  Mutual  Admiration  So 
ciety  too  seriously,  or  accept  the  New  York  Bohemian 
view  of  Boston  as  true.  For  the  most  part  the  talk  did 
not  address  itself  to  me,  but  became  an  exchange  of 

3? 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

thoughts  and  fancies  between  himself  and  Lowell.  They 
touched,  I  remember,  on  certain  matters  of  technique, 
and  the  doctor  confessed  that  he  had  a  prejudice  against 
some  words  that  he  could  not  overcome ;  for  instance,  he 
said,  nothing  could  induce  him  to  use  'neath  for  'be 
neath,  no  exigency  of  versification  or  stress  of  rhyme. 
Lowell  contended  that  he  would  use  any  word  that  car 
ried  his  meaning ;  and  I  think  he  did  this  to  the  hurt  of 
some  of  his  earlier  things.  He  was  then  probably  in 
the  revolt  against  too  much  literature  in  literature, 
which  every  one  is  destined  sooner  or  later  to  share; 
there  was  a  certain  roughness,  very  like  crudeness, 
which  he  indulged  before  his  thought  and  phrase  mel 
lowed  to  one  music  in  his  later  work.  I  tacitly  agreed 
rather  with  the  doctor,  though  I  did  not  swerve  from 
my  allegiance  to  Lowell,  and  if  I  had  spoken  I  should 
have  sided  with  him:  I  would  have  given  that  or  any 
other  proof  of  my  devotion.  Fields  casually  mentioned 
that  he  thought  "  The  Dandelion  "  was  the  most  popu 
larly  liked  of  Lowell's  briefer  poems,  and  I  made  haste 
to  say  that  I  thought  so  too,  though  I  did  not  really 
think  anything  about  it;  and  then  I  was  sorry,  for  I 
could  see  that  the  poet  did  not  like  it,  quite ;  and  I  felt 
that  I  was  duly  punished  for  my  dishonesty. 

Hawthorne  was  named  among  other  authors,  proba 
bly  by  Fields,  whose  house  had  just  published  his 
"  Marble  Faun,"  and  who  had  recently  come  home  on 
the  same  steamer  with  him.  Doctor  Holmes  asked  if  I 
had  met  Hawthorne  yet,  and  when  I  confessed  that  I 
had  hardly  yet  even  hoped  for  such  a  thing,  he  smiled 
his  winning  smile,  and  said :  "  Ah,  well !  I  don't  know 
that  you  will  ever  feel  you  have  really  met  him.  He  is 
like  a  dim  room  with  a  little  taper  of  personality  burn 
ing  on  the  corner  of  the  mantel." 

They  all  spoke  of  Hawthorne,  and  with  the  same 

38 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

affection,  but  the  same  sense  of  something  mystical  and 
remote  in  him;  and  every  word  was  priceless  to  me. 
But  these  masters  of  the  craft  I  was  'prentice  to  probably 
could  not  have  said  anything  that  I  should  not  have 
found  wise  and  well,  and  I  am  sure  now  I  should  have 
been  the  loser  if  the  talk  had  shunned  any  of  the  phases 
of  human  nature  which  it  touched.  It  is  best  to  find 
that  all  men  are  of  the  same  make,  and  that  there  are 
certain  universal  things  which  interest  them  as  much 
as  the  supernal  things,  and  amuse  them  even  more. 
There  was  a  saying  of  Lowell's  which  he  was  fond  of 
repeating  at  the  menace  of  any  form  of  the  transcen 
dental,  and  he  liked  to  warn  himself  and  others  with 
his  homely,  "  Kemember  the  dinner-bell."  What  I  re 
call  of  the  whole  effect  of  a  time  so  happy  for  me  is  that 
in  all  that  was  said,  however  high,  however  fine,  we 
were  never  out  of  hearing  of  the  dinner-bell ;  and  per 
haps  this  is  the  best  effect  I  can  leave  with  the  reader. 
It  was  the  first  dinner  served  in  courses  that  I  had  sat 
down  to,  and  I  felt  that  this  service  gave  it  a  romantic 
importance  which  the  older  fashion  of  the  West  still 
wanted.  Even  at  Governor  Chase's  table  in  Columbus 
the  Governor  carved ;  I  knew  of  the  dinner  a  la  Russe, 
as  it  was  then  called,  only  from  books;  and  it  was  a 
sort  of  literary  flavor  that  I  tasted  in  the  successive 
dishes.  When  it  came  to  the  black  coffee,  and  then  to 
the  petits  verres  of  cognac,  with  lumps  of  sugar  set  fire 
to  atop,  it  was  something  that  so  far  transcended  my 
home-kept  experience  that  it  began  to  seem  altogether 
visionary. 

Neither  Fields  nor  Doctor  Holmes  smoked,  and  I  had 
to  confess  that  I  did  not ;  but  Lowell  smoked  enough 
for  all  three,  and  the  spark  of  his  cigar  began  to  show 
in  the  waning  light  before  we  rose  from  the  table.  The 
time  that  never  had,  nor  can  ever  have,  its  fellow  for 

39 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

me,  had  to  come  to  an  end,  as  all  times  must,  and  when 
I  shook  hands  with  Lowell  in  parting,  he  overwhelmed 
me  by  saying  that  if  I  thought  of  going  to  Concord  he 
would  send  me  a  letter  to  Hawthorne.  I  was  not  to  see 
Lowell  again  during  my  stay  in  Boston;  but  Doctor 
Holmes  asked  me  to  tea  for  the  next  evening,  and  Fields 
said  I  must  come  to  breakfast  with  him  in  the  morning. 


XI 

I  recall  with  the  affection  due  to  his  friendly  nature, 
and  to  the  kindness  afterwards  to  pass  between  us  for 
many  years,  the  whole  aspect  of  the  publisher  when  I 
first  saw  him.  His  abundant  hair,  and  his  full  "  beard 
as  broad  as  ony  spade,"  that  flowed  from  his  throat  in 
Homeric  curls,  were  touched  with  the  first  frost.  He 
had  a  fine  color,  and  his  eyes,  as  keen  as  they  were  kind, 
twinkled  restlessly  above  the  wholesome  russet-red  of 
his  cheeks.  His  portly  frame  was  clad  in  those  Scotch 
tweeds  which  had  not  yet  displaced  the  traditional 
broadcloth  with  us  in  the  West,  though  I  had  sent  to 
New  York  for  a  rough  suit,  and  so  felt  myself  not  quite 
unworthy  to  meet  a  man  fresh  from  the  hands  of  the 
London  tailor. 

Otherwise  I  stood  as  much  in  awe  of  him  as  his  jovial 
soul  would  let  me ;  and  if  I  might  I  should  like  to  sug 
gest  to  the  literary  youth  of  this  day  some  notion  of  the 
importance  of  his  name  to  the  literary  youth  of  my  day. 
He  gave  aesthetic  character  to  the  house  of  Ticknor  & 
Fields,  but  he  was  by  no  means  a  silent  partner  on  the 
economic  side.  No  one  can  forecast  the  fortune  of  a  new 
book,  but  he  knew  as  well  as  any  publisher  can  know 
not  only  wrhether  a  book  was  good,  but  whether  the  read 
er  would  think  so ;  and  I  suppose  that  his  house  made 
as  few  bad  guesses,  along  with  their  good  ones,  as  any 

40 


house  that  ever  tried  the  uncertain  temper  of  the  public 
with  its  ventures.  In  the  minds  of  all  who  loved  the 
plain  brown  cloth  and  tasteful  print  of  its  issues  he  was 
more  or  less  intimately  associated  with  their  literature ; 
and  those  who  were  not  mistaken  in  thinking  De  Quin- 
cey  one  of  the  delightfulest  authors  in  the  world,  were 
especially  grateful  to  the  man  who  first  edited  his  writ 
ings  in  book  form,  and  proud  that  this  edition  was  the 
effect  of  American  sympathy  with  them.  At  that  day, 
I  believed  authorship  the  noblest  calling  in  the  world, 
and  I  should  still  be  at  a  loss  to  name  any  nobler.  The 
great  authors  I  had  met  were  to  me  the  sum  of  great 
ness,  and  if  I  could  not  rank  their  publisher  with  them 
by  virtue  of  equal  achievement,  I  handsomely  brevetted 
him  worthy  of  their  friendship,  and  honored  him  in  the 
visible  measure  of  it. 

In  his  house  beside  the  Charles,  and  in  the  close 
neighborhood  of  Doctor  Holmes,  I  found  an  odor  and 
an  air  of  books  such  as  I  fancied  might  belong  to  the 
famous  literary  houses  of  London.  It  is  still  there,  that 
friendly  home  of  lettered  refinement,  and  the  gracious 
spirit  which  knew  how  to  welcome  me,  and  make  the 
least  of  my  shyness  and  strangeness,  and  the  most  of 
the  little  else  there  was  in  me,  illumines  it  still,  though 
my  host  of  that  rapturous  moment  has  many  years  been 
of"  those  who  are  only  with  us  unseen  and  unheard.  ^  I 
remember  his  burlesque  pretence  that  morning  of  an  in 
extinguishable  grief  when  I  owned  that  I  bad  never 
eaten  blueberry  cake  before,  and  how  he  kept  returning 
to  the  pathos  of  the  fact  that  there  should  be  a  region 
of  the  earth  where  blueberry  cake  was  unknown  We 
breakfasted  in  the  pretty  room  whose  windows 
through  leaves  and  flowers  upon  the  river's  coming  anc 
going  tides,  and  whose  walls  were  covered  with  the  faces 
and  the  autographs  of  all  the  contemporary  poets  and 

41 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

novelists.  The  Fieldses  had  spent  some  days  with 
Tennyson  in  their  reeent  English  sojourn,  and  Mrs. 
Fields  had  much  to  tell  of  him,  how  he  looked,  how  ho 
smoked,  how  he  read  aloud,  and  how  he  said,  when  he 
asked  her  to  go  with  him  to  the  tower  of  his  house, 
"  Come  up  and  see  the  sad  English  sunset!"  which  had 
an  instant  value  to  me  such  as  some  rich  verse  of  his 
might  have  had.  I  was  very  new  to  it  all,  how  new  I 
could  not  very  well  say,  but  I  flattered  myself  that  I 
breathed  in  that  atmosphere  as  if  in  the  return  from 
life-long  exile.  Still  I  patriotically  bragged  of  the 
West  a  little,  and  I  told  them  proudly  that  in  Columbus 
no  book  since  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  had  sold  so  well  an 
The  Marble  Faun.  This  made  the  effect  that  I  wished, 
but  whether  it  was  true  or  not,  Heaven  knows ;  I  only 
know  that  I  heard  it  from  our  leading  bookseller,  and 
I  made  no  question  of  it  myself. 

After  breakfast,  Fields  went  away  to  the  office,  and 
I  lingered,  while  Mrs.  Fields  showed  mo  from  shelf  to 
shelf  in  the  library,  and  dazzled  me  with  the  sight  of 
authors'  copies,  and  volumes  invaluable  with  the  auto 
graphs  and  the  pencilled  notes  of  the  men  whose  names 
were  dear  to  me  from  my  love  of  their  work.  Every 
where  was  some  souvenir  of  the  living  celebrities  my 
hosts  had  met;  and  whom  had  they  not  met  in  that 
English  sojourn  in  days  before  England  embittered  her 
self  to  us  during  our  civil  war?  Not  Tennyson  only, 
but  Thackeray,  but  Dickens,  but  Charles  Reade,  but 
Carlyle,  but  many  a  minor  fame  was  in  my  ears  from 
converse  so  recent  with  them  that  it  was  as  if  I  heard 
their  voices  in  their  echoed  words. 

I  cjo  not  remember  how  long  I  stayed ;  I  remember  I 
was  afraid  of  staying  too  long,  and  so  I  am  sure  I  did 
not  stay  as  long  as  I  should  have  liked.  But  I  have 
not  the  least  notion  how  I  got  away,  and  I  am  not  cer- 

42 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

tain  where  I  spent  the  rest  of  a  day  that  began  in  the 
clouds,  but  had  to  be  ended  on  the  common  earth.  I 
suppose  I  gave  it  mostly  to  wandering  about  the  city, 
and  partly  to  recording  my  impressions  of  it  for  that 
newspaper  which  never  published  them.  The  summer 
weather  in  Boston,  with  its  sunny  heat  struck  through 
and  through  with  the  coolness  of  the  sea,  and  its  clear 
air  untainted  with  a  breath  of  smoke,  I  have  always 
loved,  but  it  had  then  a  zest  unknown  before;  and  I 
should  have  thought  it  enough  simply  to  be  alive  in  it. 
But  everywhere  I  came  upon  something  that  fed  my 
famine  for  the  old,  the  quaint,  the  picturesque,  and  how 
ever  the  day  passed  it  was  a  banquet,  a  festival.  I  can 
only  recall  my  breathless  first  sight  of  the  Public  Li 
brary  and  of  the  Athenaeum  Gallery :  great  sights  then, 
which  the  Vatican  and  the  Pitti  hardly  afterwards 
eclipsed  for  mere  emotion.  In  fact  I  did  not  see  these 
elder  treasuries  of  literature  and  art  between  break 
fasting  with  the  Autocrat's  publisher  in  the  morning, 
and  taking  tea  with  the  Autocrat  himself  in  the  evening, 
and  that  made  a  whole  world's  difference. 


XII 

The  tea  of  that  simpler  time  is  wholly  inconceivable 
to  this  generation,  which  knows  the  thing  only  as  a 
mild  form  of  afternoon  reception ;  but  I  suppose  that 
in  1860  very  few  dined  late  in  our  whole  pastoral  re 
public.  Tea  was  the  meal  people  asked  people  to  when 
they  wished  to  sit  at  long  leisure  and  large  ease ;  it  came 
at  the  end  of  the  day,  at  six  o'clock,  or  seven ;  and  one 
went  to  it  in  morning  dress.  It  had  an  unceremonied 
domesticity  in  the  abundance  of  its  light  dishes,  and  . 
fancy  these  did  not  vary  much  from  East  to  West,  except 

43 


LITEKAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

that  we  had  a  Southern  touch  in  our  fried  chicken  and 
corn  bread ;  but  at  the  Autocrat's  tea  table  the  cheering 
cup  had  a  flavor  unknown  to  me  before  that  day.  He 
asked  me  if  I  knew  it,  and  I  said  it  was  English  break 
fast  tea;  for  I  had  drunk  it  at  the  publisher's  in  the 
morning,  and  was  willing  not  to  seem  strange  to  it. 
"  Ah,  yes,"  he  said;  "  but  this  is  the  flower  of  the  sou 
chong;  it  is  the  blossom,  the  poetry  of  tea,"  and  then 
he  told  me  how  it  had  been  given  him  by  a  friend,  a 
merchant  in  the  China  trade,  which  used  to  flourish  in 
Boston,  and  was  the  poetry  of  commerce,  as  this  deli 
cate  beverage  was  of  tea.  That  commerce  is  long  past, 
and  I  fancy  that  the  plant  ceased  to  bloom  when  the 
traffic  fell  into  decay. 

The  Autocrat's  windows  had  the  same  outlook  upon 
the  Charles  as  the  publisher's,  and  after  tea  we  went  up 
into  a  back  parlor  of  the  same  orientation,  and  saw  the 
sunset  die  over  the  water,  and  the  westering  flats  and 
hills.  Nowhere  else  in  the  world  has  the  day  a  lovelier 
close,  and  our  talk  took  something  of  the  mystic  color 
ing  that  the  heavens  gave  those  mantling  expanses.  It 
was  chiefly  his  talk,  but  I  have  always  found  the  best 
talkers  are  willing  that  you  should  talk  if  you  like, 
and  a  quick  sympathy  and  a  subtle  sense  met  all  that  I 
had  to  say  from  him  and  from  the  unbroken  circle  of 
kindred  intelligences  about  him.  I  saw  him  then  in 
the  midst  of  his  family,  and  perhaps  never  afterwards 
to  better  advantage,  or  in  a  finer  mood.  We  spoke  of 
the  things  that  people  perhaps  once  liked  to  deal  with 
more  than  they  do  now;  of  the  intimations  of  immor 
tality,  of  the  experiences  of  morbid  youth,  and  of  all 
those  messages  from  the  tremulous  nerves  which  wo 
take  for  prophecies.  I  was  not  ashamed,  before  his 
tolerant  wisdom,  to  acknowledge  the  effects  that  had 
lingered  so  long  with  me  in  fancy  and  even  in  conduct, 


MY   F1EST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

from  a  time  of  broken  health  and  troubled  spirit;  and 
I  remember  the  exquisite  tact  in  him  which  recognized 
them  as  things  common  to  all,  however  peculiar  in  each, 
which  left  them  mine  for  whatever  obscure  vanity  I 
might  have  in  them,  and  yet  gave  me  the  companionship 
of  the  whole  race  in  their  experience.  We  spoke  of  fore 
bodings  and  presentiments;  we  approached  the  mystic 
confines  of  the  world  from  which  no  traveller  has  yet 
returned  with  a  passport  en  regie  and  properly  vise; 
and  he  held  his  light  course  through  these  filmy  impal 
pabilities  with  a  charming  sincerity,  with  the  scientific 
conscience  that  refuses  either  to  deny  the  substance  of 
things  unseen,  or  to  affirm  it.  In  the  gathering  dusk, 
so  weird  did  my  fortune  of  being  there  and  listening 
to  him  seem,  that  I  might  well  have  been  a  blessed  ghost, 
for  all  the  reality  I  felt  in  myself. 

I  tried  to  tell  him  how  much  I  had  read  him  from  my 
boyhood,  and  with  what  joy  and  gain;  and  he  was  pa 
tient  of  these  futilities,  and  I  have  no  doubt  imagined 
the  love  that  inspired  them,  and  accepted  that  instead  of 
the  poor  praise.    When  the  sunset  passed,  and  the  lamps 
were  lighted,  and  we  all  came  back  to  our  dear  littl 
firm-set  earth,  he  began  to  question  me  about  my  native 
re-ion  of  it.     From  many  forgotten  inquiries  I  recall 
his  asking  me  what  was  the  fashionable  religion  in 
Columbus,  or  the  Church  that  socially  corresponded  to 
the  Unitarian  Church  in  Boston.    He  had  first  to  clarify 
my  intelligence  as  to  what  Unitarianism  was;  we  had 
Universalists  but  not  Unitarians;  but  when  I  under 
stood,  I  answered  from  such  vantage  as  my  own  wh 
futside  Swedenborgianism  gave  me,  that  I  thought ^ 
of  the  most  respectable  people  with  us  were  of  1 
byterian  Church;  some  were  certainly  ^g^ 
but  upon  the  whole  the  largest  number  were  Prcs 
terians.    He  found  that  very  strange  indeed;  and  said 

45 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

that  he  did  not  believe  there  was  a  Presbyterian  Church 
in  Boston ;  that  the  New  England  Calvinists  were  all  of 
the  Orthodox  Church.  He  had  to  explain  Oxthodoxy 
to  me,  and  then  I  could  confess  to  one  Congregational 
Church  in  Columbus. 

Probably  I  failed  to  give  the  Autocrat  any  very  clear 
image  of  our  social  frame  in  the  West,  but  the  fault  was 
altogether  mine,  if  I  did.  Such  lecturing  tours  as  he 
had  made  had  not  taken  him  among  us,  as  those  of 
Emerson  and  other  New-Englanders  had,  and  my  report 
was  positive  rather  than  comparative.  I  was  full  of 
pride  in  journalism  at  that  day,  and  I  dare  say  that  I 
vaunted  the  brilliancy  and  power  of  our  newspapers 
more  than  they  merited ;  I  should  not  have  been  likely 
to  wrong  them  otherwise.  It  is  strange  that  in  all  the 
talk  I  had  with  him  and  Lowell,  or  rather  heard  from 
them,  I  can  recall  nothing  said  of  political  affairs, 
though  Lincoln  had  then  been  nominated  by  the  Repub 
licans,  and  the  Civil  War  had  practically  begun.  But 
we  did  not  imagine  such  a  thing  in  the  North ;  we  rested 
secure  in  the  belief  that  if  Lincoln  were  elected  the 
South  would  eat  all  its  fiery  words,  perhaps  from  the 
mere  love  and  inveterate  habit  of  fire-eating. 

I  rent  myself  away  from  the  Autocrat's  presence  as 
early  as  I  could,  and  as  my  evening  had  been  too  full  of 
happiness  to  sleep  upon  at  once,  I  spent  the  rest  of  the 
night  till  two  in  the  morning  wandering  about  the 
streets  and  in  the  Common  with  a  Harvard  Senior  whom 
I  had  met.  He  was  a  youth  of  like  literary  passions 
with  myself,  but  of  such  different  traditions  in  every 
possible  way  that  his  deeply  schooled  and  definitely  reg 
ulated  life  seemed  as  anomalous  to  me  as  my  own  des 
ultory  and  self-found  way  must  have  seemed  to  him. 
We  passed  the  time  in  the  delight  of  trying  to  make 
ourselves  known  to  each  other,  and  in  a  promise  to  con- 

46 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW    ENGLAND 

tinue  by  letter  the  effort,  which  duly  lapsed  into  silent 
patience  with  the  necessarily  insoluble  problem. 

XIII 

I  must  have  lingered  in  Boston  for  the  introduction 
to  Hawthorne  which  Lowell  had  offered  me,  for  when 
it  came,  with  a  little  note  of  kindness  and  counsel  for 
myself  such  as  only  Lowell  had  the  gift  of  writing, 
it  was  already  so  near  Sunday  that  I  stayed  over  till 
Monday  before  I  started.  I  do  not  recall  what  I  did 
with  the  time,  except  keep  myself  from  making  it  a 
burden  to  the  people  I  knew,  and  wandering  about  the 
city  alone.  Nothing  of  it  remains  to  me  except  the 
fortune  that  favored  me  that  Sunday  night  with  a 
view  of  the  old  Granary  Burying-ground  on  Tremont 
Street.  I  found  the  gates  open,  and  I  explored  every 
path  in  the  place,  wreaking  myself  in  such  meagre 
emotion  as  I  could  get  from  the  tomb  of  the  Franklin 
family,  and  rejoicing  with  the  whole  soul  of  my  West 
ern  modernity  in  the  evidence  of  a  remote  antiquity 
which  so  many  of  the  dim  inscriptions  afforded.  I  do 
not  think  that  I  have  ever  known  anything  practically 
older  than  these  monuments,  though  I  have  since 
supped  so  full  of  classic  and  mediaeval  ruin.  I  am  sure 
that  I  was  more  deeply  touched  by  the  epitaph  of  a 
poor  little  'Puritan  maiden  who  died  at  sixteen  in  the 
early  sixteen-thirties  than  afterwards  by  the  tomb  of 
Csecilia  Metella,  and  that  the  heartache  which  I  tried 
to  put  into  verse  when  I  got  back  to  my  room  m  t 
hotel  was  none  the  less  genuine  because  it  would  not 
lend  itself  to  my  literary  purpose,  and  remains  not 
but  pathos  to  this  day. 

I  am  not  able  to  say  how  I  reached  the  town  c 
Lowell,  where  I  went  before  going  to  Concord,  that 

47 


LITERARY   FRIENDS   AND   ACQUAINTANCE 

I  might  ease  the  unhappy  conscience  I  had  about  those 
factories  which  I  hated  so  much  to  see,  and  have  it 
clean  for  the  pleasure  of  meeting  the  fabricator  of 
visions  Avhom  I  was  authorized  to  molest  in  any  air- 
castle  where  I  might  find  him.  I  only  know  that  I 
went  to  Lowell,  and  visited  one  of  the  great  mills, 
which  with  their  whirring  spools,  the  ceaseless  flight 
of  their  shuttles,  and  the  bewildering  sight  and  sound 
of  all  their  mechanism  have  since  seemed  to  me  the 
death  of  the  joy  that  ought  to  come  from  work,  if  not 
the  captivity  of  those  who  tended  them.  But  then 
I  thought  it  right  and  well  for  me  to  be  standing  by, 

"  With  sick  and  scornful  looks  averse," 

while  these  others  t6iled;  I  did  not  see  the  tragedy 
in  it,  and  I  got  my  pitiful  literary  antipathy  away  as 
soon  as  I  could,  no  wiser  for  the  sight  of  the  ingenious 
contrivances  I  inspected,  and  I  am  sorry  to  say  no  sad 
der.  In  the  cool  of  the  evening  I  sat  at  the  door  of  my 
hotel,  and  watched  the  long  files  of  the  work-worn  fac 
tory-girls  stream  by,  with  no  concern  for  them  but  to 
see  which  was  pretty  and  which  was  plain,  and  with  no 
dream  of  a  truer  order  than  that  which  gave  them  ten 
hours'  work  a  day  in  those  hideous  mills  and  lodged 
them  in  the  barracks  where  they  rested  from  their  toil. 

XIV 

I  wonder  if  there  is  a  stage  that  still  runs  between 
Lowrell  and  Concord,  past  meadow  walls,  and  under 
the  caressing  boughs  of  way-side  elms,  and  through 
the  bird-haunted  gloom  of  woodland  roads,  in  the 
freshness  of  the  summer  morning?  By  a  blessed 
chance  I  found  that  there  was  such  a  stage  in  1860, 
and  I  took  it  from  my  hotel,  instead  of  going  back  to 

48 


MY   FIKST    VISIT    TO    N^W   ENGLAND 


Boston  and  up  to  Concord  as  I  must  have  had  to  do  by 
train.  The  journey  gave  me  the  intimacy  of  the  New 
England  country  as  I  could  have  had  it  in  no  other 
fashion,  and  for  the  first  time  I  saw  it  in  all  the  sum 
mer  sweetness  which  I  have  often  steeped  my  soul  in 
since.  The  meadows  were  newly  mown,  and  the  air 
was  fragrant  with  the  grass,  stretching  in  long  win- 
rows  among  the  brown  bowlders,  or  capped  with  can 
vas  in  the  little  haycocks  it  had  been  gathered  into  the 
day  before.  I  was  fresh  from  the  affluent  farms  of 
the  Western  Keserve,  and  this  care  of  the  grass  touched 
me  with  a  rude  pity,  which  I  also  bestowed  on  the 
meagre  fields  of  corn  and  wheat  ;  but  still  the  land  was 
lovelier  than  any  I  had  ever  seen,  with  its  old  farm 
houses,  and  brambled  gray  stone  walls,  its  stony  hill 
sides,  its  staggering  orchards,  its  wooded  tops,  and  its 
thick-brackened  valleys.  From  West  to  East  the  dif 
ference  was  as  great  as  I  afterwards  found  it  from 
America  to  Europe,  and  my  impression  of  something 
quaint  and  strange  was  no  keener  when  I  saw  Old  Eng 
land  the  next  year  than  when  I  saw  New  England 
now.  I  had  imagined  the  landscape  bare  of  trees,  and 
I  was  astonished  to  find  it  almost  as  full  of  them  as  at 
home,  though  they  all  looked  very  little,  as  they  well 
might  to  eyes  used  to  the  primeval  forests  of  Ohio. 
The  road  ran  through  them  from  time  to  time,  and 
took  their  coolness  on  its  smooth  hard  reaches,  and 
then  issued  again  in  the  glisten  of  the  open  fields. 

I  made  phrases  to  myself  about  the  scenery  as  we 
drove  along  ;  and  yes,  I  suppose  I  made  phrases  about 
the  young  girl  who  was  one  of  the  inside  passengers, 
and  who,  when  the  common  strangeness  had  somewhat 
worn  off,  began  to  sing,  and  sang  most  of  the  way  t 
Concord.     Perhaps  she  was  not  very  sage,  and 
sure  she  was  not  of  the  caste  of  Vere  de  Vere,  but  she 

4ft 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

was  pretty  enough,  and  she  had  a  voice  of  a  birdlike 
tunableness,  so  that  I  would  not  have  her  out  of  the 
memory  of  that  pleasant  journey  if  I  could.  She  was 
long  ago  an  elderly  woman,  if  she  lives,  and  I  suppose 
she  would  not  now  point  out  her  fellow-passenger  if 
he  strolled  in  the  evening  by  the  house  where  she  had 
dismounted,  upon  her  arrival  in  Concord,  and  laugh 
and  pull  another  girl  away  from  the  window,  in  the 
high  excitement  of  the  prodigious  adventure. 

XV 

Her  fellow-passenger  was  in  far  other  excitement; 
he  was  to  see  Hawthorne,  and  in  a  manner  to  meet  Pris- 
cilla  and  Zenobia,  and  Hester  Prynne  and  little  Pearl, 
and  Miriam  and  Hilda,  and  Hollingsworth  and  Cover- 
dale,  and  Chilling-worth  and  Dimmesdale,  and  Dona- 
tello  and  Kenyon ;  and  he  had  no  heart  for  any  such 
poor  little  reality  as  that,  who  could  not  have  been 
got  into  any  story  that  one  could  respect,  and  must 
have  been  difficult  even  in  a  Heinesque  poem. 

I  wasted  that  whole  evening  and  the  next  morning 
in  fond  delaying,  and  it  was  not  until  after  the  indif 
ferent  dinner  I  got  at  the  tavern  where  I  stopped,  that 
I  found  courage  to  go  and  present  Lowell's  letter  to 
Hawthorne.  I  would  almost  have  foregone  meeting 
the  "VYfiJT^  gp-T"na  only  to  have  kept  that  letter,  for  it 
said  certain  infinitely  precious  things  of  me  with  such 
a  sweetness,  such  a  grace,  as  Lowell  alone  could  give 
his  praise.  Years  afterwards,  when  Hawthorne  was 
dead,  I  met  Mrs.  Hawthorne,  and  told  her  of  the  pang 
I  had  in  parting  with  it,  and  she  sent  it  me,  doubly  en 
riched  by  Hawthorne's  keeping.  But  now  if  I  were 
to  see  him  at  all  I  must  give  up  my  letter,  and  I  carried 
it  in  my  hand  to  the  door  of  the  cottage  he  called  The 

50 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

Wayside.  It  was  never  otherwise  than  a  very  modest 
place,  but  the  modesty  was  greater  then  than  to-day, 
and  there  was  already  some  preliminary  carpentry  at 
one  end  of  the  cottage,  which  I  saw  was  to  result  in  an 
addition  to  it.  I  recall  pleasant  fields  across  the  road 
before  it;  behind  rose  a  hill  wooded  with  low  pines, 
such  as  is  made  in  Septimius  Felton  the  scene  of  the 
involuntary  duel  between  Septimius  and  the  young 
British  officer.  I  have  a  sense  of  the  woods  corning 
quite  down  to  the  house,  but  if  this  was  so  I  do  not 
know  what  to  do  with  a  grassy  slope  which  seems  to 
have  stretched  part  way  up  the  hill.  As  I  approached, 
I  looked  for  the  tower  which  the  author  was  fabled  to 
climb  into  at  sight  of  the  coming  guest,  and  pull  the 
ladder  up  after  him;  and  I  wondered  whether  he 
would  fly  before  me  in  that  sort,  or  imagine  some  easier 
means  of  escaping  me. 

The  door  was  opened  to  my  ring  by  a  tall  handsome 
boy  whom  I  suppose  to  have  been  Mr.  Julian  ^Haw 
thorne;  and  the  next  moment  I  found  myself  in  the 
presence   of   the   romancer,   who   entered   from   some 
'  room  beyond.     He  advanced  carrying  his  head  with  a 
heavy  forward  droop,  and  with  a  pace  for  which  I  de 
cided   that   the   word  would   be   pondering.     It  was 
the  pace  of  a  bulky  man  of  fifty,  and  his  head  was  that 
beautiful  head  we  all  know  from  the  many  pictures 
of  it      But  Hawthorne's  look  was  different  from  t 
of  any  picture  of  him  that  I  have  seen.     It  was  sombre 
and  brooding,  as  the  look  of  such  a  poet  should  have 
been ;  it  was  the  look  of  a  man  who  had  deat  faithfully 
and  therefore  sorrowfully  with  that  problem  of     v  1 
which   forever   attracted,   forever  evaded   Hawthon^ 
It  was  by  no  means  troubled;  it  was  full  of 
r  pose      Others  who  knew  him  better  and  saw  him 
oftener  were  familiar  with  other  aspects,  and  I  remem- 
s  51 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

ber  that  one  night  at  Longfellow's  table,  when  one 
of  the  guests  happened  to  speak  of  the  photograph  of 
Hawthorne  which  hung  in  a  corner  of  the  room,  Lowell 
said,  after  a  glance  at  it,  "  Yes,  it's  good ;  but  it  hasn't 
his  fine  accipitral  look." 

In  the  face  that  confronted  me,  however,  there  was 
nothing  of  keen  alertness;  but  only  a  sort  of  quiet, 
patient  intelligence,  for  which  I  seek  the  right  word  in 
vain.  It  was  a  very  regular  face,  with  beautiful  eyes ; 
the  mustache,  still  entirely  dark,  was  dense  over  the 
fine  mouth.  Hawthorne  was  dressed  in  black,  and  he 
had  a  certain  effect  which  I  remember,  of  seeming  to 
have  on  a  black  cravat  with  no  visible  collar.  He 
was  such  a  man  that  if  I  had  ignorantly  met  him  any 
where  I  should  have  instantly  felt  him  to  be  a  per 
sonage. 

I  must  have  given  him  the  letter  myself,  for  I  have 
no  recollection  of  parting  with  it  before,  but  I  only 
remember  his  offering  me  his  hand,  and  making  me 
shyly  and  tentatively  welcome.  After  a  few  moments 
of  the  demoralization  which  followed  his  hospitable 
attempts  in  me,  he  asked  if  I  would  not  like  to  go  up 
on  his  hill  with  him  and  sit  there,  where  he  smoked  in 
the  afternoon.  He  offered  me  a  cigar,  and  when  I 
said  that  I  did  not  smoke,  he  lighted  it  for  himself, 
and  we  climbed  the  hill  together.  At  the  top,  where 
there  was  an  outlook  in  the  pines  over  the  Concord 
meadows,  we  found  a  log,  and  he  invited  me  to  a  place 
on  it  beside  him,  and  at  intervals  of  a  minute  or  so  he 
talked  while  he  smoked.  Heaven  preserved  me  from 
the  folly  of  trying  to  tell  him  how  much  his  books  had 
been  to  me,  and  though  we  got  on  rapidly  at  no  time, 
I  think  we  got  on  better  for  this  interposition.  He 
asked  me  about  Lowell,  I  dare  say,  for  I  told  him  of 
my  joy  in  meeting  him  and  Doctor  Holmes,  and  this 

52 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

seemed  greatly  to  interest  him.  Perhaps  because 
he  was  so  lately  from  Europe,  where  our  great  men 
are  always  seen  through  the  wrong  end  of  the  tele 
scope,  he  appeared  surprised  at  my  devotion,  and  ask 
ed  me  whether  I  cared  as  much  for  meeting  them  as 
I  should  care  for  meeting  the  famous  English  authors. 
I  professed  that  I  cared  much  more,  though  whether 
this  was  true,  I  now  have  my  doubts,  and  I  think  Haw 
thorne  doubted  it  at  the  time.  But  he  said  nothing 
in  comment,  and  went  on  to  speak  generally  of  Europe 
and  America.  He  was  curious  about  the  West,  which 
he  seemed  to  fancy  much  more  purely  American,  and 
said  he  would  like  to  see  some  part  of  the  country  on 
wyhich  the  shadow  (or,  if  I  must  be  precise,  the  damned 
shadow)  of  Europe  had  not  fallen.  I  told  him  I 
thought  the  West  must  finally  be  characterized  by  the 
Germans,  whom  we  had  in  great  numbers,  and,  purely 
from  my  zeal  for  German  poetry,  I  tried  to  allege  some 
proofs  of  their  present  influence,  though  I  could  think 
of  none  outside  of  politics,  which  I  thought  they  affect 
ed  wholesomely.  I  knew  Hawthorne  was  a  Demo 
crat,  and  I  felt  it  well  to  touch  politics  lightly,  but 
he  had  no  more  to  say  about  the  fateful  election  then 
pending  than  Holmes  or  Lowell  had. 

With  the  abrupt  transition  of  his  talk  throughout, 
he  began  somehow  to  speak  of  women,  and  said  he 
had  never  seen  a  woman  whom  he  thought  quite  beau 
tiful      In  the  same  way  he  spoke  of  the  New  England 
temperament,  and  suggested  that  the  apparent  coldnes 
in  it  was  also  real,  and  that  the  suppression  of  , 
for  generations  would  extinguish  it  at  last, 
questioned  me  as  to  my  knowledge  of  Concord,  anc 
whether  I  had  seen  any  of  the  notable  people, 
swered  that  I  had  met  no  one  but  himself   as 
I  very  much  wished  to  see  Emerson  and 

53 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

did  not  think  it  needful  to  say  that  I  wished  to  see 
Thoreau  quite  as  much  because  he  had  suffered  in  the 
cause  of  John  Brown  as  because  he  had  written  the 
books  which  had  taken  me ;  and  when  he  said  that 
Thereau  prided  himself  on  coming  nearer  the  heart 
of  a  pine-tree  than  any  other  human  being,  I  could  say 
honestly  enough  that  I  would  rather  come  near  the 
heart  of  a  man.  This  visibly  pleased  him,  and  I  saw 
that  it  did  not  displease  him,  when  he  asked  whether  I 
was  not  going  to  see  his  next  neighbor,  Mr.  Alcott, 
and  I  confessed  that  I  had  never  heard  of  him.  That 
surprised  as  well  as  pleased  him;  he  remarked,  with 
whatever  intention,  that  there  was  nothing  like  recog 
nition  to  make  a  man  modest ;  and  he  entered  into  some 
account  of  the  philosopher,  whom  I  suppose  I  need  not 
be  much  ashamed  of  not  knowing  then,  since  his  in 
fluence  was  of  the  immediate  sort  that  makes  a  man 
important  to  his  townsmen  while  he  is  still  strange 
to  his  countrymen. 

Hawthorne  descanted  a  little  upon  the  landscape, 
and  said  certain  of  the  pleasant  fields  below  us  be 
longed  to  him ;  but  he  preferred  his  hill-top,  and  if  he 
could  have  his  way  those  arable  fields  should  be  grown 
up  to  pines  too.  He  smoked  fitfully,  and  slowly,  and 
in  the  hour  that  we  spent  together,  his  whiffs  were  of 
the  desultory  and  unfinal  character  of  his  words. 
When  we  went  down,  he  asked  me  into  his  house  again, 
and  would  have  me  stay  to  tea,  for  which  we  found 
the  table  laid.  But  there  was  a  great  deal  of  silence  in 
it  all,  and  at  times,  in  spite  of  his  shadowy  kindness,  I 
felt  my  spirits  sink.  After  tea,  he  showed  me  a  book 
case,  where  there  were  a  few  books  toppling  about  on 
the  half-filled  shelves,  and  said,  coldly,  "  This  is  my 
library."  I  knew  that  men  were  his  books,  and  though 
I  myself  cared  for  books  so  much,  I  found  it  fit  and 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

fine  that  he  should  care  so  little,  or  seem  to  care  so  lit 
tle.  Some  of  his  own  romances  were  among  the  volumes 
on  ^  these  shelves,  and  when  I  put  my  finger  on  the 
Blithedale  Romance  and  said  that  I  preferred  that 
to  the  others,  his  face  lighted  up,  and  he  said  that  he 
believed  the  Germans  liked  that  best  too. 

Upon  the  whole  we  parted  such  good  friends  that 
when  I  offered  to  take  leave  he  asked  me  how  long  I 
was  to  be  in  Concord,  and  not  only  bade  me  come  to  see 
him  again,  but  said  he  would  give  me  a  card  to  Emer 
son,  if  I  liked.  I  answered,  of  course,  that  I  should 
like  it  beyond  all  things ;  and  he  wrote  on  the  back  of 
his  card  something  which  I  found,  when  I  got  away,  to 
be,  "I  find  this  young  man  worthy."  The  quaintness, 
the  little  stiffness  of  it,  if  one  pleases  to  call  it  so,  was 
amusing  to  one  who  was  not  without  his  sense  of  humor, 
but  the  kindness  filled  me  to  the  throat  with  joy.  In 
fact,  I  entirely  liked  Hawthorne.  He  had  been  as  cor 
dial  as  so  shy  a  man  could  show  himself;  and  I  per 
ceived,  with  the  repose  that  nothing  else  can  give,  the 
entire  sincerity  of  his  soul. 

Nothing  could  have  been  further  from  the  behavior  of 
this  very  great  man  than  any  sort  of  posing,  apparently, 
or  a  wish  to  affect  me  with  a  sense  of  his  greatness.  I 
saw  that  he  was  as  much  abashed  by  our  encounter  as 
I  was ;  he  was  visibly  shy  to  the  point  of  discomfort, 
but  in  no  ignoble  sense  was  he  conscious,  and  as  nearly 
as  he  could  with  one  so  much  his  younger  he  made  an 
absolute  equality  between  us.  My  memory  of  him  is 
without  alloy  one  of  the  finest  pleasures  of  my  life, 
my  heart  I  paid  him  the  same  glad  homage  that  I  paid 
Lowell  and  Holmes,  and  he  did  nothing  to  make  me 
think  that  I  had  overpaid  him.  This  seems  perhaps 
very  little  to  say  in  his  praise,  but  to  my  mind  it  is  i 
ing  everything,'  for  I  have  known  but  few  great  en, 

55 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

especially  of  those  I  met  in  early  life,  when  I  wished 
to  lavish  my  admiration  upon  them,  whom  I  have  not 
the  impression  of  having  left  in  my  debt.  Then,  a  de 
fect  of  the  Puritan  quality,  which  I  have  found  in  many 
ISTew-Englanders,  is  that,  wittingly  or  unwittingly,  they 
propose  themselves  to  you  as  an  example,  or  if  not  quite 
this,  that  they  surround  themselves  with  a  subtle  ether 
of  potential  disapprobation,  in  which,  at  the  first  sign 
of  unworthiness  in  you,  they  helplessly  suffer  you  to 
gasp  and  perish ;  they  have  good  hearts,  and  they  would 
probably  come  to  your  succor  out  of  humanity,  if  they 
knew  how,  but  they  do  not  know  how.  Hawthorne  had 
nothing  of  this  about  him;  he  was  no  more  tacitly  than 
he  was  explicitly  didactic.  I  thought  him  as  thorough 
ly  in  keeping  with  his  romances  as  Doctor  Holmes  had 
seemed  with  his  essays  and  poems,  and  I  met  him  as  I 
had  met  the  Autocrat  in  the  upreme  hour  of  his  fame. 
He  had  just  given  the  world  the  last  of  those  incom 
parable  works  which  it  was  to  have  finished  from  his 
hand;  the  Marble  Faun  had  worthily  followed,  at  a 
somewhat  longer  interval  than  usual,  the  Blithedale 
Romance.,  and  the  House  of  Seven  Gables,  and  the 
Scarlet  Letter,  and  had  perhaps  carried  his  name  higher 
than  all  the  rest,  and  certainly  farther.  Everybody 
was  reading  it,  and  more  or  less  bewailing  its  indefinite 
close,  but  yielding  him  that  full  honor  and  praise  which 
a  writer  can  hope  for  but  once  in  his  life.  Nobody 
dreamed  that  thereafter  only  precious  fragments, 
sketches  more  or  less  faltering,  though  all  with  the  di 
vine  touch  in  them,  were  further  to  enrich  a  legacy 
which  in  its  kind  is  the  finest  the  race  has  received  from 
any  mind.  As  I  have  said,  we  are  always  finding  new 
Hawthornes,  but  the  illusion  soon  wears  away,  and  then 
we  perceive  that  they  were  not  Hawthornes  at  all ;  that 
he  had  some  peculiar  difference  from  them,  which,  by- 

5G 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

and-by,  we  shall  no  doubt  consent  must  be  his  difference 
from  all  men  evermore. 

I  am  painfully  aware  that  I  have  not  summoned  be 
fore  the  reader  the  image  of  the  man  as  it  has  always 
stood  in  my  memory,  and  I  feel  a  sort  of  shame  for  my 
failure.  He  was  so  altogether  simple  that  it  seems  as 
if  it  would  be  easy  to  do  so ;  but  perhaps  a  spirit  from 
the  other  world  would  be  simple  too,  and  yet  would  no 
more  stand  at  parle,  or  consent  to  be  sketched,  than 
Hawthorne.  In  fact,  he  was  always  more  or  less  merg 
ing  into  the  shadow,  which  was  in  a  few  years  wholly 
to  close  over  him;  there  was  nothing  uncanny  in  his 
presence,  there  was  nothing  even  unwilling,  but  he  had 
that  apparitional  quality  of  some  great  minds  which 
kept  Shakespeare  largely  unknown  to  those  who  thought 
themselves  his  intimates,  and  has  at  last  left  him  a 
sort  of  doubt.  There  was  nothing  teasing  or  wilfully 
elusive  in  Hawthorne's  impalpability,  such  as  I  after 
wards  felt  in  Thoreau;  if  he  was  not  there  to  your 
touch,  it  was  no  fault  of  his ;  it  was  because  your  touch 
was  dull,  arid  wanted  the  use  of  contact  with  such  nat 
ures.  The  hand  passes  through  the  veridical  phantom 
without  a  sense  of  its  presence,  but  the  phantom  is  none 
the  less  veridical  for  all  that. 

XVI 

I  kept  the  evening  of  the  day  I  met  Hawthorne 
wholly  for  the  thoughts  of  him,  or  rather  for  that 
reverberation  which  continues  in  the  young  sensibili 
ties  after  some  important  encounter.  It  must  have 
been  the  next  morning  that  I  went  to  find  Thoreau, 
and  I  am  dimly  aware  of  making  one  or  two  failures 
to  find  him,  if  I  ever  really  found  him  at  all. 

He  is  an  author  who  has  fallen  into  that  abey- 
57 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

ance,  awaiting  all  authors,  great  or  small,  at  some 
time  or  another;  but  I  think  that  with  him,  at 
least  in  regard  to  his  most  important  book,  it  can  be 
only  transitory.  I  have  not  read  the  story  of  his  her 
mitage  beside  Walden  Pond  since  the  year  1858,  but  I 
have  a  fancy  that  if  I  should  take  it  up  now,  I  should 
think  it  a  wiser  and  truer  conception  of  the  world  than 
I  thought  it  then.  It  is  no  solution  of  the  problem; 
men  are  not  going  to  answer  the  riddle  of  the  painful 
earth  by  building  themselves  shanties  and  living  upon 
beans  and  watching  ant-fights ;  but  I  do  not  believe  Tol 
stoy  himself  has  more  clearly  shown  the  hollowness, 
the  hopelessness,  the  unworthiness  of  the  life  of  the 
world  than  Thoreau  did  in  that  book.  If  it  were  newly 
written  it  could  not  fail  of  a  far  vaster  acceptance  than 
it  had  then,  when  to  those  who  thought  and  felt  seri 
ously  it  seemed  that  if  slavery  could  only  be  controlled, 
all  things  else  would  come  right  of  themselves  with  us. 
Slavery  has  not  only  been  controlled,  but  it  has  been 
destroyed,  and  yet  things  have  not  begun  to  come  right 
with  us;  but  it  was  in  the  order  of  Providence  that 
chattel  slavery  should  cease  before  industrial  slavery, 
and  the  infinitely  crueler  and  stupider  vanity  and  lux 
ury  bred  of  it,  should  be  attacked.  If  there  was  then 
any  prevision  of  the  struggle  now  at  hand,  the  seers 
averted  their  eyes,  and  strove  only  to  cope  with  the  less 
evil.  Thoreau  himself,  who  had  so  clear  a  vision  of 
the  falsity  and  folly  of  society  as  we  still  have  it,  threw 
himself  into  the  tide  that  was  already,  in  Kansas  and 
Virginia,  reddened  with  war ;  he  aided  and  abetted  the 
John  Brown  raid,  I  do  not  recall  how  much  or  in  what 
sort ;  and  he  had  suffered  in  prison  for  his  opinions  and 
actions.  It  was  this  inevitable  heroism  of  his  that,  more 
than  his  literature  even,  made  me  wish  to  see  him  and 
revere  him;  and  I  do  not  believe  that  I  should  have 

58 


found  the  veneration  difficult,  when  at  last  I  met  him  in 
his  insufficient  person,  if  he  had  otherwise  been  present 
to  my  glowing  expectation.     He  came  into  the  room  a 
quaint,  stump  figure  of  a  man,  whose  effect  of  long 
trunk  and  short  limbs  was  heightened  by  his  fashionlesd 
trousers  being  let  down  too  low.    He  had  a  noble  face, 
with  tossed  hair,  a  distraught  eye,  and  a  fine  aquilinity 
of  profile,  which  made  me  think  at  once  of  Don  Quixote 
and  of  Cervantes ;  but  his  nose  failed  to  add  that  foot 
to  his  stature  which  Lamb  says  a  nose  of  that  shape  will 
always  give  a  man.    He  tried  to  place  me  geographical 
ly  after  he  had  given  me  a  chair  not  quite  so  far  off  as 
Ohio,  though  still  across  the  whole  room,  for  he  sat 
against  one  wall,  and  I  against  the  other ;  but  apparent 
ly  he  failed  to  pull  himself  out  of  his  revery  by  the 
effort,  for  he  remained  in  a  dreamy  muse,  which  all  niy 
attempts  to  say  something  fit  about  John  Brown  and 
Walden  Pond  seemed  only  to  deepen  upon  him.    I  have 
not  the  least  doubt  that  I  was  needless  and  valueless 
about  both,  and  that  what  I  said  could  not  well  have 
prompted  an  important  response;  but  I  did  my  poor 
best,  and  I  was  terribly  disappointed  in  the  result. 
truth  is  that  in  those  days  I  was  a  helplessly  concrete 
young  person,  and  all  forms  of  the  abstract,  the 
drawn,  afflicted  me  like  physical  discomforts.    I  do  not 
remember  that  Thoreau  spoke  of  his  books  or  of  bin 
self  at  all,  and  when  he  began  to  speak  of  John  Brown, 
it  was  not  the  warm,  palpable,  loving,  fearful  old  man 
of  my  conception,  but  a  sort  of  John  Brown  type,  a 
John  Brown  ideal,  a  John  Brown  principle,  which  v 
ere  somehow  (with  long  pauses  between  the  - 
•phic  phrases)  to  cherish,  and  to  nourish  c 


were 
or 


1 1  was  not  merely  a  defeat  of  my  Hopes,  it  was  a  rout, 
and  I  felt  m^e If  I  scattered  over  the  field  of  thoaght 

59 


LITERAKY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

that  I  could  hardly  bring  my  forces  together  for  retreat. 
I  must  have  made  some  effort,  vain  and  foolish  enough, 
to  rematerialize  my  old  demigod,  but  when  I 
came  away  it  Avas  with  the  feeling  that  there  was 
very  little  more  left  of  John  Brown  than  there  was 
of  me.  His  body  was  not  mouldering  in  the  grave, 
neither  was  his  soul  marching  on ;  his  ideal,  his  type, 
his  principle  alone  existed,  and  I  did  not  know  what  to 
do  with  it.  I  am  not  blaming  Thoreau ;  his  words  were 
addressed  to  a  far  other  understanding  than  mine,  and 
it  was  my  misfortune  if  I  could  not  profit  by  them.  I 
think,  or  I  venture  to  hope,  that  I  could  profit  better 
by  them  now;  but  in  this  record  I  am  trying  honestly 
to  report  their  effect  with  the  sort  of  youth  I  was  then. 

XVII 

Such  as  I  was,  I  rather  wonder  that  I  had  the 
courage,  after  this  experiment  of  Thoreau,  to  pre 
sent  the  card  Hawthorne  had  given  me  to  Emerson. 
I  must  have  gone  to  him.  at  once,  however,  for  I 
cannot  make  out  any  interval  of  time  between  my 
visit  to  the  disciple  and  my  visit  to  the  master.  I 
think  it  was  Emerson  himself  who  opened  his  door  to 
me,  for  I  have  a  vision  of  the  fine  old  man  standing 
tall  on  his  threshold,  with  the  card  in  his  hand,  and 
looking  from  it  to  me  with  a  vague  serenity,  while  I 
waited  a  moment  on  the  door-step  below  him.  He 
must  then  have  been  about  sixty,  but  I  remember 
nothing  of  age  in  his  aspect,  though  I  have  called  him 
an  old  man.  His  hair,  I  am  sure,  was  still  entirely 
dark,  and  his  face  had  a  kind  of  marble  youthfulness, 
chiselled  to  a  delicate  intelligence  by  the  highest  and 
noblest  thinking  that  any  man  has  done.  There  was  a 
strange  charm  in  Emerson's  eyes,  which  I  felt  then  and 

60 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

always,  something  like  that  I  saw  in  Lincoln's,  but 
shyer,  but  sweeter  and  less  sad.  His  smile  was  the  very 
sweetest  I  have  ever  beheld,  and  the  contour  of  the 
mask  and  the  line  of  the  profile  were  in  keeping  with 
this  incomparable  sweetness  of  the  mouth,  at  once  grave 
and  quaint,  though  quaint  is  not  quite  the  word  for  it 
either,  but  subtly,  not  unkindly  arch,  which  again  is 
not  the  word. 

It  was  his  great  fortune  to  have  been  mostly  misun 
derstood,  and  to  have  reached  the  dense  intel licence  of 

'  O 

his  fellow-men  after  a  whole  lifetime  of  perfectly  simple 
and  lucid  appeal,  and  his  countenance  expressed  the 
patience  and  forbearance  of  a  wise  man  content  to  bide 
his  time.  It  would  be  hard  to  persuade  people  now 
that  Emerson  once  represented  to  the  popular  mind  all 
that  was  most  hopelessly  impossible,  and  that  in  a  cer 
tain  sort  he  was  a  national  joke,  the  type  of  the  incom 
prehensible,  the  byword  of  the  poor  paragraphcr.  He 
had  perhaps  disabused  the  community  somewhat  by 
presenting  himself  here  and  there  as  a  lecturer,  and 
talking  face  to  face  with  men  in  terms  which  they  could 
not  refuse  to  find  as  clear  as  they  were  wise;  he  was 
more  and  more  read,  by  certain  persons,  here  and  there; 
but  we  are  still  so  far  behind  him  in  the  reach  of  his 
far-thinking  that  it  need  not  be  matter  of  wonder  that 
twenty  years  before  his  death  he  was  the  most  misun 
derstood  man  in  America.  Yet  in  that  twilight  where 
he  dwelt  he  loomed  large  upon  the  imagination;  the 
minds  that  could  not  conceive  him  were  still  aware  of 
his  greatness.  I  myself  had  not  read  much  of  him,  but 
I  knew  the  essays  he  was  printing  in  the  Atlantic,  and 
I  knew  certain  of  his  poems,  though  by  no  means  many : 
yet  I  had  this  sense  of  him,  that  he  was  somehow,  be 
yond  and  above  my  ken,  a  presence  of  force  and  beauty 
and  wisdom,  uncompanioncd  in  our  literature.  He  had 

61 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

lately  stooped  from  his  ethereal  heights  to  take  part  in 
the  battle  of  humanity,  and  I  suppose  that  if  the  truth 
were  told  he  was  more  to  my  young  fervor  because  he 
had  said  that  John  Brown  had  made  the  gallows  glori 
ous  like  the  cross,  than  because  he  had  uttered  all  those 
truer  and  wiser  things  which  will  still  a  hundred  years 
hence  be  leading  the  thought  of  the  world. 

I  do  not  know  in  just  what  sort  he  made  me  welcome, 
but  I  am  aware  of  sitting  with  him  in  his  study  or 
library,  and  of  his  presently  speaking  of  Hawthorne, 
whom  I  probably  celebrated  as  I  best  could,  and  whom 
he  praised  for  his  personal  excellence,  and  for  his  fine 
qualities  as  a  neighbor.  "  But  his  last  book,"  he  added, 
reflectively,  "  is  a  mere  mush,"  and  I  perceived  that 
this  great  man  was  no  better  equipped  to  judge  an  art 
istic  fiction  than  the  groundlings  who  were  then  crying 
out  upon  the  indefinite  close  of  the  Marble  Faun.  Ap 
parently  he  had  read  it,  as  they  had,  for  the  story,  but 
it  seems  to  me  now,  if  it  did  not  seem  to  me  then,  that 
as  far  as  the  problem  of  evil  was  involved,  the  book 
must  leave  it  where  it  found  it.  That  is  forever  in 
soluble,  and  it  was  rather  with  that  than  with  his  more 
or  less  shadowy  people  that  the  romancer  was  con 
cerned.  Emerson  had,  in  fact,  a  defective  sense  as  to 
specific  pieces  of  literature;  he  praised  extravagantly, 
and  in  the  wrong  place,  especially  among  the  new 
things,  and  he  failed  to  see  the  worth  of  much  that  was 
fine  and  precious  beside  the  line  of  his  fancy. 

He  began  to  ask  me  about  the  West,  and  about  some 
unknown  man  in  Michigan,  who  had  been  sending  him 
poems,  and  whom  he  seemed  to  think  very  promising, 
though  he  has  not  apparently  kept  his  word  to  do  great 
tilings.  I  did  not  find  what  Emerson  had  to  say  of  my 
section  very  accurate  or  important,  though  it  was  kindly 
enough,  and  just  enough  as  to  what  the  West  ought  to 

62 


MY   FIRST   VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

do  in  literature.  He  thought  it  a  pity  that  a  literary 
periodical  which  had  lately  been  started  in  Cincinnati 
should  be  appealing  to  the  East  for  contributions,  in 
stead  of  relying  upon  the  writers  nearer  home ;  and  he 
listened  with  what  patience  he  could  to  my  modest  opin 
ion  that  we  had  not  the  writers  nearer  home.  I  never 
was  of  those  Westerners  who  believed  that  the  West  was 
kept  out  of  literature  by  the  jealousy  of  the  East,  and  I 
tried  to  explain  why  we  had  not  the  men  to  write  that 
magazine  full  in  Ohio.  He  alleged  the  man  in  Michigan 
as  one  who  alone  could  do  much  to  fill  it  worthily,  and 
again  I  had  to  say  that  I  had  never  heard  of  him. 

I  felt  rather  guilty  in  my  ignorance,  and  I  had  a  no 
tion  that  it  did  not  commend  me,  but  happily  at  this 
moment  Mr.  Emerson  was  called  to  dinner,  and  he 
asked  me  to  come  with  him.  After  dinner  we  walked 
about  in  his  "  pleached  garden  "  a  little,  and  then  we 
came  again  into  his  library,  where  I  meant  to  linger 
only  till  I  could  fitly  get  away.  He  questioned  me 
about  what  I  had  seen  of  Concord,  and  whom  besides 
Hawthorne  I  had  met,  and  when  I  told  him  only 
Thoreau,  he  asked  me  if  I  knew  the  poems  of  Mr. 
William  Ellery  Channing.  I  have  known  them  since, 
and  felt  their  quality,  which  I  have  gladly  owned  a 
genuine  and  original  poetry ;  but  I  answered  then  truly 
that  I  knew  them  only  from  Poe's  criticisms :  cruel  and 
spiteful  things  which  I  should  be  ashamed  of  enjoying 
as  I  once  did. 

"  Whose  criticisms  ?"  asked  Emerson. 

"  Poe's,"  I  said  again. 

"  Oh,"  he  cried  out,  after  a  moment,  as  if  he  had 
returned  from  a  far  search  for  my  meaning,  "  you  mean 
the  jingle-man!" 

I  do  not  know  why  this  should  have  put  me  to  such 
confusion,  but  if  I  had  written  the  criticisms  myself  I 

63 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

do  not  think  I  could  have  been  more  abashed.  Perhaps 
I  felt  an  edge  of  reproof,  of  admonition,  in  a  character 
ization  of  Poe  which  the  world  will  hardly  agree  with ; 
though  I  do  not  agree  with  the  world  about  him,  my 
self,  in  its  admiration.  At  any  rate,  it  made  an  end  of 
me  for  the  time,  and  I  remained  as  if  already  absent, 
while  Emerson  questioned  me  as  to  what  I  had  written 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly.  He  had  evidently  read  none 
of  my  contributions,  for  he  looked  at  them,  in  the  bound 
volume  of  the  magazine  which  he  got  down,  with  the 
effect  of  being  wholly  strange  to  them,  and  then  gravely 
affixed  my  initials  to  each.  He  followed  me  to  the  door, 
still  speaking  of  poetry,  and  as  he  took  a  kindly  enough 
leave  of  me,  he  said  one  might  very  well  give  a  pleas 
ant  hour  to  it  now  and  then. 

A  pleasant  hour  to  poetry!  I  was  meaning  to  give 
all  time  and  all  eternity  to  poetry,  and  I  should  by  no 
means  have  wished  to  find  pleasure  in  it ;  I  should  have 
thought  that  a  proof  of  inferior  quality  in  the  work;  I 
should  have  preferred  anxiety,  anguish  even,  to 
pleasure.  But  if  Emerson  thought  from  the  glance  he 
gave  my  verses  that  I  had  better  not  lavish  myself  upon 
that  kind  of  thing,  unless  there  was  a  great  deal  more  of 
me  than  I  could  have  made  apparent  in  our  meeting, 
no  doubt  he  was  right.  I  was  only  too  painfully  aware 
of  my  shortcoming,  but  I  felt  that  it  was  shorter-coming 
than  it  need  have  been.  I  had  somehow  not  prospered 
in  my  visit  to  Emerson  as  I  had  with  Hawthorne,  and 
I  came  away  wondering  in  what  sort  I  had  gone  wrong. 
I  was  not  a  forth-putting  youth,  and  I  could  not  blame 
myself  for  anything  in  my  approaches  that  merited 
withholding;  indeed,  I  made  no  approaches;  but  as  I 
must  needs  blame  myself  for  something,  I  fell  upon  the 
fact  that  in  my  confused  retreat  from  Emerson's  pres 
ence  I  had  failed  in  a  certain  slight  point  of  ceremony, 

64 


MY   FIRST    VISIT    TO    NEW   ENGLAND 

and  I  magnified  this  into  an  offence  of  capital  im 
portance.  I  went  home  to  my  hotel,  and  passed  the 
afternoon  in  pure  misery.  I  had  moments  of  wild 
question  when  I  debated  whether  it  would  be  better  to 
go  back  and  own  my  error,  or  whether  it  would  be  better 
to  write  him  a  note,  and  try  to  set  myself  right  in  that 
way.  But  in  the  end  I  did  neither,  and  I  have  since 
survived  my  mortal  shame  some  forty  years  or 
more.  But  at  the  time  it  did  not  seem  possible  that  I 
should  live  through  the  day  with  it,  and  I  thought  that 
I  ought  at  least  to  go  and  confess  it  to  Hawthorne,  and 
let  him  disown  the  wretch  who  had  so  poorly  repaid 
the  kindness  of  his  introduction  by  such  misbehavior. 
I  did  indeed  walk  down  by  the  Wayside,  in  the  cool  of 
the  evening,  and  there  I  saw  Hawthorne  for  the  last 
time.  He  was  sitting  on  one  of  the  timbers  beside  his 
cottage,  and  smoking  with  an  air  of  friendly  calm.  I 
had  got  on  very  well  with  him,  and  I  longed  to  go  in, 
and  tell  him  how  ill  I  had  got  on  with  Emerson ;  I  be 
lieved  that  though  he  cast  me  off,  he  would  understand 
me,  and  would  perhaps  see  some  hope  for  me  in  another 
world,  though  there  could  be  none  in  this. 

But  I  had  not  the  courage  to  speak  of  the  affair  to 
any  one  but  Fields,  to  whom  I  unpacked  my  heart  when 
I  got  back  to  Boston,  and  he  asked  me  about  my^  ad 
ventures  in  Concord.  By  this  time  I  could  see  it  in  a 
humorous  light,  and  I  did  not  much  mind  his  lying 
back  in  his  chair  and  laughing  and  laughing,  till  I 
thought  he  would  roll  out  of  it,  He  perfectly  con 
ceived  the  situation,  and  got  an  amusement  from  it  that 
I  could  get  only  through  sympathy  with  him. 
thought  it  a  favorable  moment  to  propose  myself  as  the 
assistant  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  which  I  had 
the  belief  I  could  very  well  become,  with  advanta 
myself  if  not  to  the  magazine.  He  seemed  to  think  so 

65 


too;  he  said  that  if  the  place  had  not  just  been  filled, 
I  should  certainly  have  had  it ;  and  it  was  to  his  recol 
lection  of  this  prompt  ambition  of  mine  that  I  suppose 
I  may  have  owed  my  succession  to  a  like  vacancy  some 
four  years  later.  He  was  charmingly  kind;  he  entered 
with  the  sweetest  interest  into  the  story  of  my  economic 
life,  which  had  been  full  of  changes  and  chances  al 
ready.  But  when  I  said  very  seriously  that  now  I  was 
tired  of  these  fortuities,  and  would  like  to  be  settled  in 
something,  he  asked,  with  dancing  eyes, 

"  Why,  how  old  are  you  ?" 

"  I  am  twenty-three,"  I  answered,  and  then  the  laugh 
ing  fit  took  him  again. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  you  begin  young,  out  there !" 

In  my  heart  I  did  not  think  that  twenty-three  was  so 
very  young,  but  perhaps  it  was;  and  if  any  one  were 
to  say  that  I  had  been  portraying  here  a  youth  whose 
aims  were  certainly  beyond  his  achievements,  who  was 
morbidly  sensitive,  and  if  not  conceited  was  intolerably 
conscious,  who  had  met  with  incredible  kindness,  and 
had  suffered  no  more  than  was  good  for  him,  though  he 
might  not  have  merited  his  pain  any  more  than  his  joy. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  should  gainsay  him,  for  I  am  not 
at  all  sure  that  I  was  not  just  that  kind  of  youth  when 
I  paid  my  first  visit  to  New  England. 


part  SeconO 
FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

IT  was  by  boat  that  I  arrived  from  Boston,  on  an 
August  morning  of  1860,  which  was  probably  of 
the  same  quality  as  an  August  morning  of  1900.  I 
used  not  to  mind  the  weather  much  in  those  days;  it 
was  hot  or  it  was  cold,  it  was  wet  or  it  was  dry,  but  it 
was  not  my  affair;  and  I  suppose  that  I  sweltered 
about  the  strange  city,  with  no  sense  of  anything  very 
personal  in  the  temperature,  until  nightfall.  What 
I  remember  is  being  high  up  in  a  hotel  long  since  laid 
low,  listening  in  the  summer  dark,  after  the  long  day 
was  done,  to  the  Niagara  roar  of  the  omnibuses  whose 
tide  then  swept  Broadway  from  curb  to  curb,  for  all 
the  miles  of  its  length.  At  that  hour  the  other  city 
noises  were  stilled,  or  lost  in  this  vaster  volume  of 
sound,  which  seemed  to  fill  the  whole  night.  It  Jiad 
a  solemnity  which  the  modern  comer  to  New  York 
will  hardly  imagine,  for  that  tide  of  omnibuses  has  long 
since  ebbed  away,  and  has  left  the  air  to  the  strident 
discords  of  the  elevated  trains  and  the  irregular 
alarum  of  the  grip-car  gongs,  which  blend  to  no  such 
harmonious  thunder  as  rose  from  the  procession  ( 
those  ponderous  and  innumerable  vans.  There  wa 
a  sort  of  inner  quiet  in  the  sound,  and  when  I  ch< 
I  slept  off  to  it,  and  woke  to  it  in  the  morning  refreshed 
and  strengthened  to  explore  the  literary  situatii 

the  metropolis. 

6  67 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 


ISTot  that  I  think  I  left  this  to  the  second  day.  Very 
probably  I  lost  no  time  in  going  to  the  office  of  the 
Saturday  Press,  as  soon  as  I  had  my  breakfast  after 
arriving,  and  I  have  a  dim  impression  of  anticipating 
the  earliest  of  the  Bohemians,  whose  gay  theory  of 
life  obliged  them  to  a  good  many  hardships  in  lying 
down  early  in  the  morning,  and  rising  up  late  in  the 
day.  If  it  was  the  office-boy  who  bore  me  company 
during  the  first  hour  of  my  visit,  by-and-by  the  editors 
and  contributors  actually  began  to  come  in.  I  would 
not  be  very  specific  about  them  if  I  could,  for  since 
that  Bohemia  has  faded  from  the  map  of  the  republic 
of  letters,  it  has  grown  more  and  more  difficult  to  trace 
its  citizenship  to  any  certain  writer.  There  are  some 
living  who  knew  the  Bohemians  and  even  loved  them, 
but  there  are  increasingly  few  who  were  of  them,  even 
in  the  fond  retrospect  of  youthful  follies  and  errors. 
It  was  in  fact  but  a  sickly  colony,  transplanted  from 
the  mother  asphalt  of  Paris,  and  never  really  striking 
root  in  the  pavements  of  ISTew  York;  it  was  a  colony 
of  ideas,  of  theories,  which  had  perhaps  never  had  any 
deep  root  anywhere.  What  these  ideas,  these  theories, 
were  in  art  and  in  life,  it  would  not  be  very  easy  to 
say;  but  in  the  Saturday  Press  they  came  to  violent 
expression,  not  to  say  explosion,  against  all  existing 
forms  of  respectability.  If  respectability  was  your 
'bete  noire,  then  you  were  a  Bohemian ;  and  if  you  were 
in  the  habit  of  rendering  yourself  in  prose,  then  you 
necessarily  shredded  your  prose  into  very  fine  para 
graphs  of  a  sentence  each,  or  of  a  very  few  words,  or 
even  of  one  word.  I  believe  this  fashion  prevailed 
till  very  lately  with  some  of  the  dramatic  critics,  who 

68 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

thought  that  it  gave  a  quality  of  epigram  to  the  style; 
and  I  suppose  it  was  borrowed  from  the  more  spasmodic 
moments  of  Victor  Hugo  hy  the  editor  of  the  Press. 
He  brought  it  back  with  him  when  he  came  home  from 
one  of  those  sojourns  in  Paris  which  possess  one  of  the 
French  accent  rather  than  the  French  language ;  I  long 
desired  to  write  in  that  fashion  myself,  but  I  had  not 
the  courage. 

This  editor  was  a  man  of  such  open  and  avowed 
cynicism  that  he  may  have  been,  for  all  I  know,  a  kind 
ly  optimist  at  heart;  some  say,  however,  that  he  had 
really  talked  himself  into  being  what  he  seemed.  I  only 
know  that  his  talk,  the  first  day  I  saw  him,  was  of  such 
a   sort  that  if  he  was  half  as  bad,  he  would  have 
been  too  bad  to  be.     He  walked  up  and  down  his  room 
saying  what  lurid  things  he  would  directly  do  if  any 
one  accused  him  of  respectability,  so  that  he  might  dis 
abuse  the  minds  of  all  witnesses.     There  were  four  or 
five  of  his  assistants  and  contributors  listening  to  the 
dreadful  threats,  which  did  not  deceive  even  so  great 
innocence  as  mine,  but  I  do  not  know  whether  they 
found  it  the  sorry  farce  that  I  did.     They  probably 
felt  the  fascination  for  him  which  I  could  not  disown, 
in  spite  of  my  inner  disgust;  and  were  watchful  at 
the  same  time  for  the  effect  of  his  words  with  one  who 
was  confessedly  fresh  from  Boston,  and  was  full 
delight  in  the  people  he  had  seen  there.     It  appeared 
with  him,  to  be  proof  of  the  inferiority  of  Boston  that 
if  you  passed  down  Washington  Street,  half  a  dozen 
men  in  the  crowd  would  know  you  -ere  Holmes    c 
Lowell,  or  Longfellow,  or  Wendell  Phillips;  but  m 
Broadway  no  one  would  know  who  you  were  or  care 
fhe  measure  of  his  smallest  blasphemy.     I  have  since 
heard  L  more  than  once  urged  as  a  signal  advantage 
of  New  York  for  the  aesthetic  inhabitant,  but  I  am  not 

69 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

sure,  yet,  that  it  is  so.  The  unrecognized  celebrity 
probably  has  his  mind  quite  as  much  upon  himself 
as  if  some  one  pointed  him  out,  and  otherwise  I  can 
not  think  that  the  sense  of  neighborhood  is  such  a 
bad  thing  for  the  artist  in  any  sort.  It  involves  the 
sense  of  responsibility,  which  cannot  be  too  constant 
or  too  keen.  If  it  narrows,  it  deepens;  and  this  may 
be  the  secret  of  Boston. 

II 

It  would  not  be  easy  to  say  just  why  the  Bohemian 
group  represented  New  York  literature  to  my  imagi 
nation,  for  I  certainly  associated  other  names  with  its 
best  work,  but  perhaps  it  was  because  I  had  written 
for  the  Saturday  Press  myself,  and  had  my  pride  in 
it,  and  perhaps  it  was  because  that  paper  really  em 
bodied  the  new  literary  life  of  the  city.  It  was  clever, 
and  full  of  the  wit  that  tries  its  teeth  upon  everything. 
It  attacked  all  literary  shams  but  its  own,  and  it  made 
itself  felt  and  feared.  The  young  writers  throughout 
the  country  were  ambitious  to  be  seen  in  it,  and  they 
gave  their  best  to  it ;  they  gave  literally,  for  the  Satur 
day  Press  never  paid  in  anything  but  hopes  of  paying, 
vaguer  even  than  promises.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  it  was  very  nearly  as  well  for  one  to  be  accepted 
by  the  Press  as  to  be  accepted  by  the  Atlantic,  and  for 
the  time  there  was  no  other  literary  comparison.  To 
be  in  it  was  to  be  in  the  company  of  Fitz  James 
O'Brien,  Eitzhugh  Ludlow,  Mr.  Aldrich,  Mr.  Sted- 
man,  and  whoever  else  was  liveliest  in  prose  or  loveli 
est  in  verse  at  that  day  in  New  York.  It  was  a  power, 
and  although  it  is  true  that,  as  Henry  Giles  said  of  it, 
"  Man  cannot  live  by  snapping-turtle  alone,"  the  Press 
was  very  good  snapping-turtle.  Or,  it  seemed  so  then ; 
I  should  be  almost  afraid  to  test  it  now,  for  I  do  not 

70 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITEEAEY  NEW  YORK 

like  snapping-turtle  so  much  as  I  once  did,  and  I  have 
grown  nicer  in  my  taste,  and  want  my  snapping-turtle 
of  the  very  best.  What  is  certain  is  that  I  went  to 
the  office  of  the  Saturday  Press  in  New  York  with 
much  the  same  sort  of  feeling  I  had  in  going  to  the 
office  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  in  Boston,  but  I  came 
away  with  a  very  different  feeling.  I  had  found  there 
a  bitterness  against  Boston  as  great  as  the  bitterness 
against  respectability,  and  as  Boston  was  then  rapidly 
becoming  my  second  country,  I  could  not  join  in  the 
scorn  thought  of  her  and  said  of  her  by  the  Bohemians. 
I  fancied  a  conspiracy  among  them  to  shock  the  liter 
ary  pilgrim,  and  to  minify  the  precious  emotions  he 
had  experienced  in  visiting  other  shrines;  but  I  found 
no  harm  in  that,  for  I  knew  just  how  much  to  be  shock 
ed,  and  I  thought  I  knew  better  how  to  value  certain 
things  of  the  soul  than  they.  Yet  when  their  chief  ask 
ed  me  how  I  got  on  with  Hawthorne,  and  I  began  to 
say  that  he  was  very  shy  and  I  was  rather  shy,  and 
the  king  of  Bohemia  took  his  pipe  out  to  break  in  upon 
me  with  "Oh,  a  couple  of  shysters!"  and  the  rest 
laughed,  I  was  abashed  all  they  could  have  wished, 
and  was  not  restored  to  myself  till  one  of  them  said 
that  the  thought  of  Boston  made  him  as  ugly  as  sin^ 
then  I  began  to  hope  again  that  men  who  took  them-' 
selves  so  seriously  as  that  need  not  be  taken  very  seri 
ously  by  me. 

In  fact  I  had  heard  things  almost  as  despei 
cynical  in  other  newspaper  offices  before  that,  and^I 
could  not  see  what  was  so  distinctively  Bohemian  i 
these  animo  prave,  these  souls  so  baleful  by  their  own 
showing.     But   apparently  Bohemia  was  not  e 

that  vou  could  well  imagine  from  one  encounter  ^ 
since  my  stay  in  New  York  was  to  be  very  short,  I  lo* 
noUme'in  acquainting  myself  further  with  it.  That 

71 


L1TERAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

very  night  I  went  to  the  beer-cellar,  once  very  far 
up  Broadway,  where  I  was  given  to  know  that  the  Bo 
hemian  nights  were  smoked  and  quaffed  away.  It  was 
said,  so  far  West  as  Ohio,  that  the  queen  of  Bohemia 
sometimes  came  to  Pf  aff's :  a  young  girl  of  a  sprightly 
gift  in  letters,  whose  name  or  pseudonym  had  made 
itself  pretty  well  known  at  that  day,  and  whose  fate, 
pathetic  at  all  times,  out-tragedies  almost  any  other  in 
the  history  of  letters.  She  was  seized  with  hydrophobia 
from  the  bite  of  her  dog,  on  a  railroad  train ;  and  made 
a  long  journey  home  in  the  paroxysms  of  that  agoniz 
ing  disease,  which  ended  in  her  death  after  she  reached 
New  York.  But  this  was  after  her  reign  had  ended, 
and  no  such  black  shadow  was  cast  forward  upon 
Pfaff's,  whose  name  often  figured  in  tKe  verse  and  the 
epigrammatically  paragraphed  prose  of  the  Saturday 
Press.  I  felt  that  as  a  contributor  and  at  least  a  bre 
vet  Bohemian  I  ought  not  to  go  home  without  visiting 
the  famous  place,  and  witnessing  if  I  could  not  share 
the  revels  of  my  comrades.  As  I  neither  drank  beer 
nor  smoked,  my  part  in  the  carousal  was  limited  to  a 
German  pancake,  which  I  found  they  had  very  good 
at  Pfaff's,  and  to  listening  to  the  whirling  words  of 
my  commensals,  at  the  long  board  spread  for  the  Bo 
hemians  in  a  cavernous  space  under  the  pavement. 
There  were  writers  for  the  Saturday  Press  and  for 
Vanity  Fair  (a  hopefully  comic  paper  of  that  day), 
and  some  of  the  artists  who  drew  for  the  illustrated 
periodicals.  Nothing  of  their  talk  remains  with  me, 
but  the  impression  remains  that  it  was  not  so  good  talk 
as  I  had  heard  in  Boston.  At  one  moment  of  the  orgy, 
which  went  but  slowly  for  an  orgy,  we  were  joined  by 
some  belated  Bohemians  whom  the  others  made  a  great 
clamor  over ;  I  was  given  to  understand  they  were  just 
recovered  from  a  fearful  debauch;  their  locks  were 

.  72 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

still  damp  from  the  wet  towels  used  to  restore  them, 
and  their  eyes  were  very  frenzied.  I  was  presented  to 
these  types,  who  neither  said  nor  did  anything  worthy 
of  their  awful  appearance,  but  dropped  into  seats  at 
the  table,  and  ate  of  the  supper  with  an  appetite  that 
seemed  poor.  I  stayed  hoping  vainly  for  worse  things 
till  eleven  o'clock,  and  then  I  rose  and  took  my  leave  of 
a.  literary  condition  that  had  distinctly  disappointed 
me.  I  do  not  say  that  it  may  not  have  been  wickeder 
and_wittier  than  I  found  it ;  I  only  report  what  I  saw 
and  heard  in  Bohemia  on  my  first  visit  to  New  York, 
and  I  know  that  my  acquaintance  with  it  was  not  ex 
haustive.  When  I  came  the  next  year  the  Saturday 
Press  was  no  more,  and  the  editor  and  his  contributors 
had  no  longer  a  common  centre.  The  best  of  the  young 
fellows  whom  I  met  there  confessed,  in  a  pleasant 
exchange  of  letters  which  we  had  afterwards,  that  he 
thought  the  pose  a  vain  and  unprofitable  one;  and 
when  the  Press  was  revived,  after  the  war,  it  was  with 
out  any  of  the  old  Bohemian  characteristics  except 
that  of  not  paying  for  material.  It  could  not  last  long 
upon  these  terms,  and  again  it  passed  away,  and  still 
waits  its  second  palingenesis. 

The  editor  passed  away  too,  not  long  after,  and  the 
thing  that  he  had  inspired  altogether  ceased  to  be.     lie 
was  a  man  of  a  certain  sardonic  power,  and  used  it 
rather  fiercely  and  freely,  with  a  joy  probably  more  ap 
parent  than  real  in  the  pain  it  gave.  In  my  last  knowl 
edge  of  him  he  was  much  milder  than  when  I  first 
him,  and  I  have  the  feeling  that  he  too  came  to  own 
before  he  died  that  man  cannot  live  by  snapping-turtl 
alone.     He  was  kind  to  some  neglected  talents    and 
befriended   them  with   a  vigor  and  a  zeal  which  he 
would  have  been  the  last  to  let  you  call  generous, 
chief   of   these   was  Walt   Whitman,   who,   when   1 

73 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Saturday  Press  took  it  up,  had  as  hopeless  a  cause 
with  the  critics  on  either  side  of  the  ocean  as  any  man 
could  have.     It  was  not  till  long  afterwards  that  his 
English  admirers  began  to  discover  him,  and  to  make 
his   countrymen   some   noisy  reproaches   for   ignoring 
him;  they  were  wholly  in  the  dark  concerning  him 
when  the  Saturday  Press,  which  first  stood  his  friend, 
and  the  young  men  whom  the  Press  gathered  about  it, 
made  him  their  cult.     No  doubt  he  was  more  valued 
because  he  was  so  offensive  in  some  ways  than  he  would 
have  been  if  he  had  been  in  no  way  offensive,  but  it 
remains  a  fact  that  they  celebrated  him  quite  as  much 
as  was  good  for  them.     He  was  often  at  Pfaff's  with 
them,  and  the  night  of  my  visit  he  was  the  chief  fact 
of  my  experience.     I  did  not  know  he  was  there  till  I 
was  on  my  way  out,  for  he  did  not  sit  at  the  table  under 
the  pavement,  but  at  the  head  of  one  farther  into  the 
room.  There,  as  I  passed,  some  friendly  fellow  stopped 
me  and  named  me  to  him,  and  I  remember  how  he 
leaned  back  in  his  chair,  and  reached  out  his  great  hand 
to  me,  as  if  he  were  going  to  give  it  me  for  good  and 
all.     He  had  a  fine  head,  with  a  cloud  of  Jovian  hair 
upon  it,  and  a  branching  beard  and  mustache,  and  gen 
tle  eyes  that  looked  most  kindly  into  mine,  and  seemed 
to  wish  the  liking  which  I  instantly  gave  him,  though 
we  hardly  passed  a  word,  and  our  acquaintance  was 
summed  up  in  that  glance  and  the  grasp  of  his  mighty 
fist  upon  my  hand.     I  doubt  if  he  had  any  notion  who' 
or  what  I  was  beyond  the  fact  that  I  was  a  young  poet 
of  some  sort,  but  he  may  possibly  have  remembered 
seeing  my  name  printed  after  some  very  Heinesque 
verses  in  the  Press.     I  did  not  meet  him  again  for 
twenty  years,  and  then  I  had  only  a  moment  with  him 
when  he  was  reading  the  proofs  of  his  poems  in  Bos 
ton.     Some  years  later  I  saw  him  for  the  last  time, 

74 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

one  day  after  his  lecture  on  Lincoln,  in  that  city,  when 
he  came  down  from  the  platform  to  speak  with  some 
hand-shaking  friends  who  gathered  about  him.  Then 
and  always  he  gave  me  the  sense  of  a  sweet  and  true 
soul,  and  I  felt  in  him  a  spiritual  dignity  which  I  will 
not  try  to  reconcile  with  his  printing  in  the  forefront 
of  his  book  i  passage  from  a  private  letter  of  Emer 
son's,  though  I  believe  he  would  not  have  seen  such  a 
thing  as  most  other  men  would,  or  thought  ill  of  it  in 
another.  The  spiritual  purity  which  I  felt  in  him 
no  less  than  the  dignity  is  something  that  I  will  no 
more  try  to  reconcile  with  what  denies  it  in  his  page ; 
but  such  things  we  may  well  leave  to  the  adjustment 
of  finer  balances  than  we  have  at  hand.  I  will  make 
sure  only  of  the  greatest  benignity  in  the  presence  of 
the  man.  The  apostle  of  the  rough,  the  uncouth,  was 
the  gentlest  person ;  his  barbaric  yawp,  translated  into 
the  terms  of  social  encounter,  was  an  address  of  singu 
lar  quiet,  delivered  in  a  voice  of  winning  and  endear 
ing  friendliness. 

As  to  his  work  itself,  I  suppose  that  I  do  not  think 
it  so  valuable  in  effect  as  in  intention.    He  was  a  lib 
erating  force,  a  very  «  imperial  anarch  "  in  literature; 
but  liberty  is  never  anything  but  a  means,  and  wh; 
Whitman  achieved  was  a  means  and  not  an  end,  m  what 
must  be  called  his  verse.    I  like  his  prose,  if  there 
difference,  much  better;  there  he  is  of  a  genial  and 
comforting  quality,  very  rich  and  cordial,  such  as  I 
him  to  be  when  I  met  him  in  person.    His  verse  seems 
to  me  not  poetry,  but  the  materials  of  poetry,  1, 
emotions;  yet  I  would  not  misprize  it,  and 
to  own  that  I  have  had  moments  of  great  pleasure  in  it 
Some  French  critic  quoted  in  the  ^^fj^ 
cannot  think  of  his  name)  sald  the  best  thing  c 
when  he  said  that  he  made  you  a  partner  of  the  ente 

75 


LITEKAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

prise,  for  that  is  precisely  what  he  does,  and  that  is 
what  alienates  and  what  endears  in  him,  as  you  like  or 
dislike  the  partnership.  It  is  still  something  neigh 
borly,  brotherly,  fatherly,  and  so  I  felt  him  to  be  when 
the  benign  old  man  looked  on  me  and  spoke  to  me. 

Ill 

That  night  at  PfafPs  must  have  been  the  last  of  the 
Bohemians  for  me,  and  it  was  the  last  of  New  York 
authorship  too,  for  the  time.  I  do  not  know  why  I 
should  not  have  imagined  trying  to  see  Curtis,  whom  I 
knew  so  much  by  heart,  and  whom  I  adored,  but  I  may 
not  have  had  the  courage,  or  I  may  have  heard  that  he 
was  out  of  town;  Bryant,  I  believe,  was  then  out  of 
the  country;  but  at  any  rate  I  did  not  attempt  him 
either.  The  Bohemians  were  the  beginning  and  the 
end  of  the  story  for  me,  and  to  tell  the  truth  I  did  not 
like  the  story.  I  remember  that  as  I  sat  at  that  table 
under  the  pavement,  in  Pfaff's  beer-cellar,  and  listened 
to  the  wit  that  did  not  seem  very  funny,  I  thought  of 
the  dinner  with  Lowell,  the  breakfast  with  Fields,  the 
supper  at  the  Autocrat's,  and  felt  that  I  had  fallen  very 
far.  In  fact  it  can  do  no  harm  at  this  distance  of  time 
to  confess  that  it  seemed  to  me  then,  and  for  a  good 
while  afterwards,  that  a  person  who  had  seen  the  men 
and  had  the  things  said  before  him  that  I  had  in  Boston, 
could  not  keep  himself  too  carefully  in  cotton ;  and  this 
was  what  I  did  all  the  following  winter,  though  of 
course  it  was  a  secret  between  me  and  me.  I  dare  say 
it  was  not  the  worst  thing  I  could  have  done,  in  some 
respects. 

My  sojourn  in  New  York  could  not  have  been  very 
long,  and  the  rest  of  it  was  mainly  given  to  viewing  the 
monuments  of  the  city  from  the  windows  of  omnibuses 

70 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

and  the  platforms  of  horse-cars.     The  world  was  so 
simple  then  that  there  were  perhaps  only  a  half-dozen 
cities  that  had  horse-cars  in  them,  and  I  travelled  in 
those  conveyances  at  New  York  with  an  unfaded  zest, 
even  after  my  journeys  back  and  forth  between  Boston 
and  Cambridge.     I  have  not  the  least  notion  where  I 
went  or  what  I  saw,  but  I  suppose  that  it  was  up  and 
down  the  ugly  east  and  west  avenues,  then  lying  open 
to  the  eye  in  all  the  hideousness  now  partly  concealed  by 
the  elevated  roads,  and  that  I  found  them  very  stately 
and  handsome.     Indeed,  Kew  York  was  really  hand 
somer  then  than  it  is  now,  when  it  has  so  many  more 
pieces  of  beautiful  architecture,  for  at  that  day  the  sky 
scrapers  were  not  yet,  and  there  was  a  fine  regularity 
in  the  streets  that  these  brute  bulks  have  robbed  of  all 
shapeliness.     Dirt  and  squalor  there  were  a  plenty,  but 
there  was  infinitely  more  comfort.     The  long  succes 
sion  of  cross  streets  was  yet  mostly  secure  from  busi 
ness,  after  you  passed  Clinton  Place;  commerce  was 
•just  beginning  to  show  itself  in  Union  Square,  and 
Madison  Square  was  still  the  home  of  the  McFlimsies, 
whose  kin  and  kind  dwelt  unmolested  in  the  brown- 
stone  stretches  of  Fifth  Avenue.    I  tried  hard  to  imaj 
ine  them  from  the  acquaintance  Mr.  Butler's  poem  had 
given  me,  and  from  the  knowledge  the  gentle  satire  ( 
The  Potipliar  Papers  had  spread  broadcast  through 
a  community  shocked  by  the  excesses  of  our  best 
etv;  it  was  not  half  so  bad  then  as  the  best  now,  prob, 
blv     But  I  do  not  think  I  made  very  much  of  it  p 
haps  because  most  of  the  people  who  ought  to  have  I 
in  those  fine  mansions  were  away  at  the  sea-^de  an 

"mottains  I  had  seen  on  my  way  do,,  from 
Canada  but  he  La-side  not,  and  it  would  never  do  to 
go  home  without  visiting  some  famous  summer  resort. 

77 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

I  must  have  fixed  upon  Long  Branch  because  I  must 
have  heard  of  it  as  then  the  most  fashionable ;  and  one 
afternoon  I  took  the  boat  for  that  place.  By  this  means 
I  not  only  saw  sea-bathing  for  the  first  time,  but  I  saw 
a  storm  at  sea:  a  squall  struck  us  so  suddenly  that  it 
blew  away  all  the  camp-stools  of  the  forward  prome 
nade  ;  it  was  very  exciting,  and  I  long  meant  to  use  in 
literature  the  black  wall  of  cloud  that  settled  on  the 
water  before  us  like  a  sort  of  portable  midnight ;  I  now 
throw  it  away  upon  the  reader,  as  it  were;  it  never 
would  come  in  anywhere.  I  stayed  all  night  at  Long 
Branch,  and  I  had  a  bath  the  next  morning  before  break 
fast  :  an  extremely  cold  one,  with  a  life-line  to  keep 
me  against  the  undertow.  In  this  rite  I  had  the  com 
pany  of  a  young  !N"ew- Yorker,  whom  I  had  met  on  the 
boat  coming  down,  and  who  was  of  the  light,  hopeful, 
adventurous  business  type  which  seems  peculiar  to  the 
city,  and  which  has  always  attracted  me.  He  told  me 
much  about  his  life,  and  how  he  lived,  and  what  it  cost 
him  to  live.  He  had  a  large  room  at  a  fashionable 
boarding-house,  and  he  paid  fourteen  dollars  a  week. 
In  Columbus  I  had  such  a  room  at  such  a  house,  and 
paid  three  and  a  half,  and  I  thought  it  a  good  deal.  But 
those  were  the  days  before  the  war,  when  America  was 
the  cheapest  country  in  the  world,  and  the  West  was 
incredibly  inexpensive. 

After  a  day  of  lonely  splendor  at  this  scene  of  fashion 
and  gayety,  I  went  back  to  New  York,  and  took  the  boat 
for  Albany  on  my  way  home.  I  noted  that  I  had  no 
longer  the  vivid  interest  in  nature  and  human  nature 
which  I  had  felt  in  setting  out  upon  my  travels,  and  I 
said  to  myself  that  this  was  from  having  a  mind  so 
crowded  with  experiences  and  impressions  that  it  could 
receive  no  more ;  and  I  really  suppose  that  if  the  hap 
piest  phrase  had  offered  itself  to  me  at  some  moments,  I 

78 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

should  scarcely  have  looked  about  me  for  a  landscapeora 
figure  to  fit  it  to.  I  was  very  glad  to  get  back  to  my  dear 
little  city  in  the  West  (I  found  it  seething  in  an  August 
sun  that  was  hot  enough  to  have  calcined  the  limestone 
State  House),  and  to  all  the  friends  I  was  so  fond  of. 


IV 

I  did  what  I  could  to  prove  myself  unworthy  of  them 
by  refusing  their  invitations,  and  giving  myself  wholly 
to  literature,  during  the  early  part  of  the  winter  that 
followed ;  and  I  did  not  realize  my  error  till  the  invita 
tions  ceased  to  come,  and  I  found  myself  in  an  unbroken 
intellectual  solitude.  The  worst  of  it  was  that  an  un 
grateful  Muse  did  little  in  return  for  the  sacrifices  I 
made  her,  and  the  things  I  now  wrote  were  not  liked  by 
the  editors  I  sent  them  to.  The  editorial  taste  is  not 
always  the  test  of  merit,  but  it  is  the  only  one  we  have, 
and  I  am  not  saying  the  editors  were  wrong  in  my  case. 
There  were  then  such  a  very  few  places  where  you  could 
market  your  work:  the  Atlantic  in  Boston  and  Harper's 
in  ISTew  York  were  the  magazines  that  paid,  though  the 
Independent  newspaper  bought  literary  material;  the 
Saturday  Press  printed  it  without  buying,  and  so  did 
the  old  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  though  there  was  pe 
cuniary  good-will  in  both  these  cases.  I  toiled  much 
that  winter  over  a  story  I  had  long  been  writing,  and  at 
last  sent  it  to  the  Atlantic,  which  had  published  five 
poems  for  me  the  year  before.  After  some  weeks,  or  it 
may  have  been  months,  I  got  it  back  with  a  note  saying 
that  the  editors  had  the  less  regret  in  returning  it  be 
cause  they  saw  that  in  the  May  number  of  the  Knicker 
bocker  the  first  chapter  of  the  story  had  appeared.  Then 
I  remembered  that,  years  before,  I  had  sent  this  chapter 
to  that  magazine,  as  a  sketch  to  be  printed  by  itself,  and 

79 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

afterwards  had  continued  the  story  from  it.  I  had 
never  heard  of  its  acceptance,  and  supposed  of  course 
that  it  was  rejected;  but  on  my  second  visit  to  New 
York  I  called  at  the  Knickerbocker  office,  and  a  new 
editor,  of  those  that  the  magazine  was  always  having 
in  the  days  of  its  failing  fortunes,  told  me  that  he  had 
found  my  sketch  in  rummaging  about  in  a  barrel  of  his 
predecessors'  manuscripts,  and  had  liked  it,  and  printed 
it.  He  said  that  there  were  fifteen  dollars  coming  to 
me  for  that  sketch,  and  might  he  send  the  money  to  me  ? 
I  said  that  he  might,  though  I  do  not  see,  to  this  day, 
why  he  did  riot  give  it  me  on  the  spot;  and  he  made  a 
very  small  minute  in  a  very  large  sheet  of  paper  (really 
like  Dick  Swiveller),  and  promised  I  should  have  it 
that  night;  but  I  sailed  the  next  day  for  Liverpool 
without  it.  I  sailed  without  the  money  for  some  verses 
that  Vanity  Fair  bought  of  me,  but  I  hardly  expected 
that,  for  the  editor,  who  was  then  Artemus  Ward,  had 
frankly  told  me  in  taking  my  address  that  ducats  were 
few  at  that  moment  with  Vanity  Fair. 

I  was  then  on  my  way  to  be  consul  at  Venice,  where 
I  spent  the  next  four  years  in  a  vigilance  for  Confed 
erate  privateers  which  none  of  them  ever  surprised.  I 
had  asked  for  the  consulate  at  Munich,  where  I  hoped 
to  steep  myself  yet  longer  in  German  poetry,  but  when 
my  appointment  came,  I  found  it  was  for  Rome.  I  was 
very  glad  to  get  Rome  even;  but  the  income  of  the 
office  was  in  fees,  and  I  thought  I  had  better  go  on  to 
Washington  and  find  out  how  much  the  fees  amounted 
to.  People  in  Columbus  who  had  been  abroad  said  that 
on  five  hundred  dollars  you  could  live  in  Rome  like  a 
prince,  but  I  doubted  this ;  and  when  I  learned  at  the 
State  Department  that  the  fees  of  the  Roman  consulate 
came  to  only  three  hundred,  I  perceived  that  I  could  not 
live  better  than  a  baron,  probably,  and  I  despaired.  The 

80 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

kindly  chief  of  the  consular  bureau  said  that  the  Presi 
dent's  secretaries,  Mr.  John  Nicolay  and  Mr.  John.  Hay, 
were  interested  in  my  appointment,  and  he  advised  my 
going  over  to  the  White  House  and  seeing  them.  I  lost 
no  time  in  doing  that,  and  I  learned  that  as  young  West 
ern  men  they  were  interested  in  me  because  I  was  a 
young  Western  man  who  had  done  something  in  litera 
ture,  and  they  were  willing  to  help  me  for  that  reason, 
and  for  no  other  that  I  ever  knew.  They  proposed  my 
going  to  Venice;  the  salary  was  then  seven  hundred 
and  fifty,  but  they  thought  they  could  get  it  put  up  to 
a  thousand.  In  the  end  they  got  it  put  up  to  fifteen 
hundred,  and  so  I  went  to  Venice,  where  if  I  did  not 
live  like  a  prince  on  that  income,  I  lived  a  good  deal 
more  like  a  prince  than  I  could  have  done  at  Koine  on 
a  fifth  of  it. 

If  the  appointment  was  not  present  fortune,  it  was 
the  beginning  of  the  best  luck  I  have  had  in  the  world, 
and  I  am  glad  to  owe  it  all  to  those  friends  of  my  verse, 
who  could  have  been  no  otherwise  friends  of  me.  They 
were  then  beginning  very  early  careers  of  distinction 
which  have  not  been  wholly  divided.  Mr.  Nicolay  could 
have  been  about  twenty-five,  and  Mr.  Hay  nineteen  ^or 
twenty.  ~Ko  one  dreamed  as  yet  of  the  opportunity 
opening  to  them  in  being  so  constantly  near  the  man 
whose  life  they  have  written,  and  with  whose  fame  they 
have  imperishably  interwrought  their  names.  I  re 
member  the  sobered  dignity  of  the  one,  and  the  humor 
ous  gayety  of  the  other,  and  how  we  had  some  young 
men's  joking  and  laughing  together,  in  the  anteroom 
where  they  received  me,  with  the  great  soul  entering 
upon  its  travail  beyond  the  closed  door.  They  asked  me 
if  I  had  ever  seen  the  President,  and  I  said  that 
seen  him  at  Columbus,  the  year  before ;  but  I  could  not 
say  how  much  I  should  like  to  see  him  again,  and  than 

J  81 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

him  for  the  favor  which  I  had  no  claim  to  at  his  hands, 
except  such  as  the  slight  campaign  biography  I  had 
written  could  be  thought  to  have  given  me.  That  day 
or  another,  as  I  left  my  friends,  I  met  him  in  the  corri 
dor  without,  and  he  looked  at  the  space  I  was  part  of 
with  his  ineffably  melancholy  eyes,  without  knowing 
that  I  was  the  indistinguishable  person  in  whose  "in 
tegrity  and  abilities  he  had  reposed  such  special  confi 
dence  "  as  to  have  appointed  him  consul  for  \7"enice  and 
the  ports  of  the  Lombardo- Venetian  Kingdom,  though 
he  might  have  recognized  the  terms  of  my  commission 
if  I  had  reminded  him  of  them.  I  faltered  a  moment 
in  my  longing  to  address  him,  and  then  I  decided  that 
every  one  who  forebore  to  speak  needlessly  to  him,  or  to 
shake  his  hand,  did  him  a  kindness ;  and  I  wish  I  could 
be  as  sure  of  the  wisdom  of  all  my  past  behavior  as  I 
am  of  that  piece  of  it.  He  walked  up  to  the  water- 
cooler  that  stood  in  the  corner,  and  drew  himself  a  full 
goblet  from  it,  which  he  poured  down  his  throat  with  a 
backward  tilt  of  his  head,  and  then  went  wearily  within 
doors.  The  whole  affair,  so  simple,  has  always  re 
mained  one  of  a  certain  pathos  in  my  memory,  and  I 
would  rather  have  seen  Lincoln  in  that  unconscious 
moment  than  on  some  statelier  occasion. 


I  went  home  to  Ohio,  and  sent  on  the  bond  I  was  to 
file  in  the  Treasury  Department;  but  it  was  mislaid 
there,  and  to  prevent  another  chance  of  that  kind  I  car 
ried  on  the  duplicate  myself.  It  was  on  my  second  visit 
that  I  met  the  generous  young  Irishman  William  D. 
O'Connor,  at  the  house  of  my  friend  Piatt,  and  heard 
his  ardent  talk.  He  was  one  of  the  promising  men  of 
that  day,  and  he  had  written  an  anti-slavery  novel  in 

82 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

the  heroic  mood  of  Victor  Hugo,  which  greatly  took  my 
fancy  ;  and  I  believe  he  wrote  poems  too.  lie  had  not 
yet  risen  to  be  the  chief  of  Walt  Whitman's  champions 
outside  of  the  Saturday  Press,  but  he  had  already 
espoused  the  theory  of  Bacon's  authorship  of  Shake 
speare,  then  newly  exploited  by  the  poor  lady  of  Bacon's 
name,  who  died  constant  to  it  in  an  insane  asylum.  He 
used  to  speak  of  the  reputed  dramatist  as  "  the  fat 
peasant  of  Stratford,"  and  he  was  otherwise  picturesque 
of  speech  in  a  measure  that  consoled,  if  it  did  not  con 
vince.  The  great  war  was  then  full  upon  us,  and  when 
in  the  silences  of  our  literary  talk  its  awful  breath  was 
heard,  and  its  shadow  fell  upon  the  hearth  where  we 
gathered  round  the  first  fires  of  autumn,  O'Connor 
would  lift  his  beautiful  head  with  a  fine  effect  of  proph 
ecy,  and  say,  "  Friends,  I  feel  a  sense  of  victory  in  the 
air."  He  was  not  wrong;  only  the  victory  was  for  the 

other  side. 

Who  beside  O'Connor  shared  in  these  saddened  sym 
posiums  I  cannot  tell  now;  but  probably  other  young 
journalists    and   office-holders,    intending   litterateurs, 
since  more  or  less  extinct.    I  make  certain  only  of  the 
young  Boston  publisher  who  issued  a  very  handsome 
edition  of  Leaves  of  Grass,  and  then  failed  promptly 
if  not  consequently.    But  I  had  already  met,  in  my  fin 
sojourn  at  the  capital,  a  young  journalist  who  had  givci 
hostages  to  poetry,  and  whom  I  was  very  glad  to  s 
and  proud  to  know.    Mr.  Stedman  and  I  were  talkm 
over  that  meeting  the  other  day,  and  I  can  ^-er  than 
I  might  have  been  without  his  memory,  that  I  found 
him  ft  a  friend's  house,  where  he  was  nursing  him 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

pose  of  the  literary  life;  and  the  world  knows  without 
my  telling  how  true  he  has  been  to  his  ideal  of  it. 
His  earthly  mission  then  was  to  write  letters  from 
Washington  for  the  New  York  World,  which  started  in 
life  as  a  good  young  evening  paper,  with  a  decided  reli 
gious  tone,  so  that  the  Saturday  Press  could  call  it  the 
Night-blooming  Serious.  I  think  Mr.  Stedman  wrote 
for  its  editorial  page  at  times,  and  his  relation  to  it  as  a 
Washington  correspondent  had  an  authority  which  is 
wanting  to  the  function  in  these  days  of  perfected  tele 
graphing.  He  had  not  yet  achieved  that  seat  in  the 
(Stock  Exchange  whose  possession  has  justified  his  re 
course  to  business,  and  has  helped  him  to  mean  some 
thing  more  single  in  literature  than  many  more  singly 
devoted  to  it.  I  used  sometimes  to  speak  about  that 
with  another  eager  young  author  in  certain  middle 
years  when  we  were  chafing  in  editorial  harness,  and  we 
always  decided  that  Stedman  had  the  best  of  it  in  being 
able  to  earn  his  living  in  a  sort  so  alien  to  literature 
that  he  could  come  to  it  un jaded,  and  with  a  gust  un 
spoiled  by  kindred  savors.  But  no  man  shapes  his  own 
life,  and  I  dare  say  that  Stedman  may  have  been  all  the 
time  envying  us  our  tripods  from  his  high  place  in  the 
Stock  Exchange.  What  is  certain  is  that  he  has  come 
to  stand  for  literature  and  to  embody  New  York  in  it 
as  no  one  else  does.  In  a  community  which  seems  never 
to  have  had  a  conscious  relation  to  letters,  he  has  kept 
the  faith  with  dignity  and  fought  the  fight  wiith  constant 
courage.  Scholar  and  poet  at  once,  he  has  spoken  to 
his  generation  with  authority  which  we  can  forget  only 
in  the  charm  which  makes  us  forget  everything  else. 

But  his  fame  was  still  before  him  when  we  met, 
and  I  could  bring  to  him  an  admiration  for  work 
which  had  not  yet  made  itself  known  to  so  many;  but 
any  admirer  was  welcome.  We  talked  of  what  we  had 

84 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

done,  and  each  said  how  much  he  liked  certain  things 
of  the  other's ;  I  even  seized  my  advantage  of  his  help 
lessness  to  read  him  a  poem  of  mine  which  I  had  in  my 
pocket;  he  advised  me  where  to  place  it;  and  if  the 
reader  will  not  think  it  an  unfair  digression,  I  will  tell 
here  what  became  of  that  poem,  for  I  think  its  varied 
fortunes  were  amusing,  and  I  hope  my  own  sufferings 
and  final  triumph  with  it  will  not  be  without  encourage 
ment  to  the  young  literary  endeavorer.    It  was  a  poem 
called,  with  no  prophetic  sense  of  fitness,  "Forlorn,"  and 
I  tried  it  first  with  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  which  would 
not  have  it.     Then  I  offered  it  in  person  to  a  former 
editor  of  Harper's  Monthly,  but  he  could  not  see  his  ad 
vantage  in  it,  and  I  carried  it  overseas  to  Venice  with 
me.    From  that  point  I  sent  it  to  all  the  English  maga 
zines  as  steadily  as  the  post  could  carry  it  away  and 
bring  it  back.     On  my  way  home,  four  years  later,  t 
took  it  to  London  with  me,  where  a  friend  who  knew 
Lewes,  then  just  beginning  with  the  Fortnightly  Re- 
vieiu,  sent  it  to  him  for  me.    It  was  promptly  returned, 
with  a  letter  wholly  reserved  as  to  its  quality,  but  full 
of  a  poetic  gratitude  for  my  wish  to  contribute  to  the 
Fortnightly.     Then  I  heard  that  a  certain  Mr.  Lucas 
was  about  to  start  a  magazine,  and  I  offered  the  poem 
to  him.    The  kindest  letter  of  acceptance  followed  me  t 
America,   and  I  counted  upon  fame  and  fortune  as 
usual,  when  the  news  of  Mr.  Lucas's  death  came     I  wil 
not  poorly  joke  an  effect  from  my  poem  in  the  fact ; 
the  fact  remains.     By  this  time  I  was  a  writer  m  the 
office  of  the  Nation  newspaper,  and  after  I  lei 
place  to  be  Mr.  Fields's  assistant  on  the  Atlantic,  I 
my  poem  to  the  Nation,  where  it  was  printed  at  last 
In  such  scant  measure  as  my  verses  have  pleased  it  has 
found  rather  unusual  favor,  and  I  need  not  say  that  its 
misfortunes  endeared  it  to  its  author. 

85 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

But  all  this  is  rather  far  away  from  my  first  meeting 
with  Stedmaii  in  Washington.  Of  course  I  liked  him, 
and  I  thought  him  very  handsome  and  fine,  with  a  full 
beard  cut  in  the  fashion  he  has  always  worn  it,  and  with 
poet's  eyes  lighting  an  aquiline  profile.  Afterwards, 
when  I  saw  him  afoot,  I  found  him  of  a  worldly  splen 
dor  in  dress,  and  envied  him,  as  much  as  I  could  envy 
him  anything,  the  New  York  tailor  whose  art  had 
clothed  him:  I  had  a  New  York  tailor  too,  but  with  a 
difference.  He  had  a  worldly  dash  along  with  his  su 
permundane  gifts,  which  took  me  almost  as  much,  and 
all  the  more  because  I  could  see  that  he  valued  himself 
nothing  upon  it.  He  was  all  for  literature,  and  for 
literary  men  as  the  superiors  of  every  one.  I  must 
have  opened  my  heart  to  him  a  good  deal,  for  when  I 
told  him  how  the  newspaper  I  had  written  for  from 
Canada  and  New  England  had  ceased  to  print  my  let 
ters,  he  said,  "  Think  of  a  man  like  sitting  in 

judgment  on  a  man  like  you!"  I  thought  of  it,  and  was 
avenged  if  not  comforted ;  and  at  any  rate  I  liked  Sted- 
man's  standing  up  so  stiffly  for  the  honor  of  a  craft 
that  is  rather  too  limp  in  some  of  its  votaries. 

I  suppose  it  was  he  who  introduced  me  to  the  Stod- 
dards,  whom  I  met  in  New  York  just  before  I  sailed, 
and  who  were  then  in  the  glow  of  their  early  fame  as 
poets.  They  knew  about  my  poor  beginnings,  and  they 
were  very,  very  good  to  me.  Stoddard  went  with  me 
to  Franklin  Square,  and  gave  the  sanction  of  his  pres 
ence  to  the  ineffectual  offer  of  my  poem  there.  But 
what  I  relished  most  was  the  long  talks  I  had  with  them 
both  about  authorship  in  all  its  phases,  and  the  ex 
change  of  delight  in  this  poem  and  that,  this  novel  and 
that,  with  gay,  wilful  runs  away  to  make  some  wholly- 
irrelevant  joke,  or  fire  puns  into  the  air  at  no  mark 
whatever.  Stoddard  had  then  a  fame,  with  the  sweet- 

86 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

ness  of  personal  affection  in  it,  from  the  lyrics  and  the 
odes  that  will  perhaps  best  keep  him  known,  and  Mrs. 
Stoddard  was  beginning  to  make  her  distinct  and  special 
quality  felt  in  the  magazines,  in  verse  and  fiction.  In 
both  it  seems  to  me  that  she  has  failed  of  the  recogni 
tion  which  her  work  merits.  Her  tales  and  novels  have 
in  them  a  foretaste  of  realism,  which  was  too  strange  for 
the  palate  of  their  day,  and  is  now  too  familiar,  perhaps. 
It  is  a  peculiar  fate,  and  would  form  the  scheme  of  a 
pretty  study  in  the  history  of  literature.  But  in  what 
ever  she  did  she  left  the  stamp  of  a  talent  like  no  other, 
and  of  a  personality  disdainful  of  literary  environ 
ment.  In  a  time  when  most  of  us  had  to  write  like 
Tennyson,  or  Longfellow,  or  Browning,  she  never  would 
write  like  any  one  but  herself. 

I  remember  very  well  the  lodging  over  a  corner  of 
Fourth  Avenue  and  some  downtown  street  where  I  vis 
ited  these  winning  and  gifted  people,  and  tasted  the 
pleasure  of  their  racy  talk,  and  the  hospitality  of  their 
good-will  toward  all  literature,  which  certainly  did  not 
leave  me  out.  We  sat  before  their  grate  in  the  chill  of 
the  last  October  days,  and  they  set  each  other  on  to  one 
wild  flight  of  wit  after  another,  and  again  I  bathed  my 
delighted  spirit  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  realm  where  for 
the  time  at  least  no 

« rumor  of  oppression  or  defeat, 

Of  unsuccessful  or  successful  war," 

could  penetrate.     I  liked  the  Stoddards  because  they 
were  frankly  not  of  that  Bohemia  which  I  d.shked  i 
much,  and  thought  it  of  no  promise  or  valid,  y ; 
because  I  was  fond  of  their  poetry  and  found   he 
it     I  liked  the  absolutely  literary  keeping  of  their  1 
He  had  then,  and  for  long  after,  a  place  „,  the  Gusto,,, 
house,  but  he  was  no  more  of  that  than  Lamb  wa. 

87 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

India  House.  He  belonged  to  that  better  world  where 
there  is  no  interest  but  letters,  and  which  was  as  much 
like  heaven  for  me  as  anything  I  could  think  of. 

The  meetings  with  the  Stoddards  repeated  themselves 
when  I  came  back  to  sail  from  New  York,  early  in  No 
vember.  Mixed  up  with  the  cordial  pleasure  of  them  in 
my  memory  is  a  sense  of  the  cold  and  wet  outdoors,  and 
the  misery  of  being  in  those  infamous  New  York  streets, 
then  as  for  long  afterwards  the  squalidest  in  the  world. 
The  last  night  I  saw  my  friends  they  told  me  of  the 
tragedy  which  had  just  happened  at  the  camp  in  the 
City  Hall  Park.  Fitz  James  O'Brien,  the  brilliant 
young  Irishman  who  had  dazzled  us  with  his  story  of 
"  The  Diamond  Lens/'  and  frozen  our  blood  with  his 
ingenious  tale  of  a  ghost — "  What  was  It  ?" — a  ghost 
that  could  be  felt  and  heard,  but  not  seen — had  enlisted 
for  the  war,  and  risen  to  be  an  officer  with  the  swift 
process  of  the  first  days  of  it.  In  that  camp  he  had 
just  then  shot  and  killed  a  man  for  some  infraction  of 
discipline,  and  it  was  uncertain  what  the  end  would  be. 
He  was  acquitted,  however,  and  it  is  known  how  he 
afterwards  died  of  lockjaw  from  a  wound  received  in 
battle. 

VI 

Before  this  last  visit  in  New  York  there  was  a  second 
visit  to  Boston,  which  I  need  not  dwell  upon,  because  it 
was  chiefly  a  revival  of  the  impressions  of  the  first. 
Again  I  saw  the  Fieldses  in  their  home;  again  the 
Autocrat  in  his,  and  Lowell  now  beneath  his  own  roof, 
beside  the  study  fire  where  I  was  so  often  to  sit  with  him 
in  coming  years.  At  dinner  (which  we  had  at  two 
o'clock)  the  talk  turned  upon  my  appointment,  and  he 
said  of  me  to  his  wife :  "  Think  of  his  having  got  Still- 
man's  place !  We  ought  to  put  poison  in  his  wine,"  and 

88 


MY  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LITERARY  NEW  YORK 

he  told  me  of  the  wish  the  painter  had  to  go  to  Venice 
and  follow  up  Ruskin's  work  there  in  a  book  of  his  own. 
But  he  would  not  let  me  feel  very  guilty,  and  I  will  not 
pretend  that  I  had  any  personal  regret  for  my  good 
fortune. 

The  place  was  given  me  perhaps  because  I  had  not 
nearly  so  many  other  gifts  as  he  who  lost  it,  and  who 
was  at  once  artist,  critic,  journalist,  traveller,  and  emi 
nently  each.  I  met  him  afterwards  in  Eome,  which  the 
powers  bestowed  upon  him  instead  of  Venice,  and  he 
forgave  me,  though  I  do  not  know  whether  he  forgave 
the  powers.  We  walked  far  and  long  over  the  Cam- 
pagna,  and  I  felt  the  charm  of  a  most  uncommon  mind 
in  talk  which  came  out  richest  and  fullest  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  wild  nature  which  he  loved  and  knew  so 
much  better  than  most  other  men.  I  think  that  the  book 
he  would  have  written  about  Venice  is  forever  to  be  re 
gretted,  and  I  do  not  at  all  console  myself  for  its  loss 
with  the  book  I  have  written  myself. 

At  Lowell's  table  that  day  they  spoke  of  what  sort  of 
winter  I  should  find  in  Venice,  and  he  inclined  to  the 
belief  that  I  should  want  a  fire  there.  On  his  study 
hearth  a  very  brisk  one  burned  when  we  went  back  to 
it  and  kept  out  the  chill  of  a  cold  easterly  storm.  We 
looked  through  one  of  the  windows  at  the  ram,  and  he 
said  he  could  remember  standing  and  looking  out  of 
that  window  at  such  a  storm  when  he  was  a  child;  f. 
he  was  born  in  that  house,  and  his  life  had  kept  coming 
back  to  it.  He  died  in  it,  at  last. 

In  a  lifting  of  the  rain  he  walked  with  me  down  t 
the  village,  as  he  always  called  the  denser  part  of  • 
town  about  Harvard  Square,  and  saw  me  aboard  a 
horse-car  for  Boston.    Before  we  parted  he  gave 
'charges:  to  open  my  mouth  when  I  began  to  spea 
ItaHan,  and  to  think  well  of  women.    He  said  that  our 

89 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

race  spoke  its  own  tongue  with  its  teeth  shut,  and  so 
failed  to  master  the  languages  that  wanted  freer  utter 
ance.  As  to  women,  he  said  there  were  unworthy  ones, 
but  a  good  woman  was  the  best  thing  in  the  world,  and 
a  man  was  always  the  better  for  honoring  women. 


Part  Sbfrfr 
ROUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 


•rVlIPJXG  the  four  years  of  my  life  in  Venice  the 
literary  intention  was  present  with  me  at  all 
times  and  in  all  places.     I  wrote  many  things  in  verse, 
winch  I  sent  to  the  magazines  in  every  part  of  the  Eng 
lish-speaking  world,  but  they  came  unerringly  back  to 
me,  except  in  three  instances  only,  when  they  were  kept 
by  the  editors  who  finally  printed  them.     One  of  these 
pieces  was  published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly;  another 
in  Harpers  Magazine;  the  third  was  got  into  the  New 
York  Ledger  through  the  kindness  of  Doctor  Edward 
Everett  Hale,  who  used  I  know  not  what  mighty~magic 
to  that  end.     I  had  not  yet  met  him  ;  but  he  interested 
himself  in  my  ballad  as  if  it  had  been  his  own.     His 
brother,  Charles  Hale,  later  Consul-General  for  Egypt, 
wrhom  I  saw  almost  every  moment  of  the  two  visits  he 
paid  Venice  in  my  time,  had  sent  it  to  him,  after  copy 
ing  it  in  his  own  large,  fair  hand,  so  that  it  could  be 
read.     He  was  not  quite  of  that  literary  Boston  which 
I  so  fondly  remembered  my  glimpses  of  ;  he  was  rather 
of  a  journalistic  and  literary  Boston  which  I  had  never 
known  ;  but  he  was  of  Boston,  after  all.     He  had  been 
in  Lowell's  classes  at  Harvard  ;  he  had  often  met  Long 
fellow   in   Cambridge;   he   knew  Doctor  Holmes,   of 
course;  and  he  let  me  talk  of  my  idols  to  my  heart's 
content.  I  think  he  must  have  been  amused  by  my  rapt 
ures;  most  people  would  have  been;  but  he  was  kind 

91 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

and  patient,  and  he  listened  to  me  with  a  sweet  intelli 
gence  which  I  shall  always  gratefully  remember.  He 
died  too  young,  with  his  life's  possibilities  mainly  un 
fulfilled  ;  but  none  who  knew  him  could  fail  to  imagine 
them,  or  to  love  him  for  what  he  was. 


Besides  those  few  pitiful  successes,  I  had  nothing 
but  defeats  in  the  sort  of  literature  which  I  supposed 
was  to  be  my  calling,  and  the  defeats  threw  me  upon 
prose;  for  some  sort  of  literary  thing,  if  not  one,  then 
another,  I  must  do  if  I  lived;  and  I  began  to  write 
those  studies  of  Venetian  life  which  afterwards  became 
a  book,  and  which  I  contributed  as  letters  to  the  Boston 
'Advertiser.,  after  vainly  offering  them  to  more  esthetic 
periodicals.  However,  I  do  not  imagine  that  it  was 
a  very  smiling  time  for  any  literary  endeavorer  at 
home  in  the  life-and-death  civil  war  then  waging. 
Some  few  young  men  arose  who  made  themselves 
heard  amid  the  din  of  arms  even  as  far  as  Venice,  but 
most  of  these  were  hushed  long  ago.  I  fancy  Theodore 
Winthrop,  who  began  to  speak,  as  it  were,  from  his 
soldier's  grave,  so  soon  did  his  death  follow  the  earliest 
recognition  by  the  public,  and  so  many  were  his  pos 
thumous  works,  was  chief  of  these;  but  there  were 
others  whom  the  present  readers  must  make  greater 
effort  to  remember.  Forceythe  <Willson,who  wrote  The 
Old  Sergeant,  became  known  for  the  rare  quality 
of  his  poetry;  and  now  and  then  there  came  a  poem 
from  Aldrich,  or  Stedman,  or  Stoddard.  The  great 
new  series  of  the  Biglow  Papers  gathered  volume  with 
the  force  they  had  from  the  beginning.  The  Autocrat 
was  often  in  the  pages  of  the  Atlantic,  where  one  often 
found  Whittier  and  Emerson,  with  many  a  fresh  name 

92 


ROUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 

now  faded.  In  Washington  the  Piatts  were  writing 
some  of  the  most  beautiful  verse  of  the  war,  and 
Brownell  was  sounding  his  battle  lyrics  like  so  many 
trumpet  blasts.  The  fiction  which  followed  the  war 
was  yet  all  to  come.  Whatever  was  done  in  any  kind 
had  some  hint  of  the  war  in  it,  inevitably;  though  in 
the  very  heart  of  it  Longfellow  was  setting  about  his 
great  version  of  Dante  peacefully,  prayerfully,  as  he 
has  told  in  the  noble  sonnets  which  register  the  mood 
of  his  undertaking. 

At  Venice,  if  I  was  beyond  the  range  of  literary 
recognition  I  was  in  direct  relations  with  one  of  our 
greatest  literary  men,  who  was  again  of  that  literary 
Boston  which  mainly  represented  American  literature 
to  me.  The  official  chief  of  the  consul  at  Venice  was 
the  United  States  Minister  at  Vienna,  and  in  my  time 
this  minister  was  John  Lothrop  Motley,  the  historian. 
He  was  removed,  later,  by  that  Johnson  administration 
which  followed  Lincoln's  so  forgottenly  that  I  name 
it  with  a  sense  of  something  almost  prehistoric. 
Among  its  worst  errors  was  the  attempted  discredit 
of  a  man  who  had  given  lustre  to  our  name  by  his 
work,  and  who  was  an  ardent  patriot  as  well  as  accom 
plished  scholar.  He  visited  Venice  during  my  first 
year,  which  was  the  darkest  period  of  the  civil  war, 
and  I  remember  with  what  instant  security,  not  to  say 
severity,  he  rebuked  my  scarcely  whispered  misgivings 
of  the  end,  when  I  ventured  to  ask  him  what  he  though 
it  would  be.  Austria  had  never  recognized  the 
cessionists  as  belligerents,  and  in  the  complications 
with  France  and  England  there  was  little  for  our 
ister  but  to  share  the  home  indignation  at  the  sympathy 
of  those  powers  with  the  South.  In  Motley  this  was 
heightened  by  that  feeling  of  astonishment  of  wounc 
ed  faith,  which  all  Americans  with  English  friend- 

93 


ships  experienced  in  those  days,  and  which  he,  whose 
English  friendships  were  many,  experienced  in  pecu 
liar  degree. 

I  drifted  about  with  him  in  his  gondola,  and  refresh 
ed  myself,  long  a-hungered  for  such  talk,  with  his  talk 
of  literary  life  in  London.  Through  some  acquain 
tance  I  had  made  in  Venice  I  was  able  to  be  of  use  to 
him  in  getting  documents  copied  for  him  in  the  Vene 
tian  Archives,  especially  the  Relations  of  the  Vene 
tian  Ambassadors  at  different  courts  during  the  period 
and  events  he  was  studying.  All  such  papers  passed 
through  my  hands  in  transmission  to  the  historian, 
though  now  I  do  not  quite  know  why  they  need  have 
done  so;  but  perhaps  he  was  willing  to  give  me  the 
pleasure  of  being  a  partner,  however  humble,  in  the 
enterprise.  My  recollection  of  him  is  of  courtesy  to  a 
far  younger  man  unqualified  by  patronage,  and  of  a 
presence  of  singular  dignity  and  grace.  He  was  one 
of  the  handsomest  men  I  ever  saw,  with  beautiful  eyes, 
a  fine  blond  beard  of  modish  cut,  and  a  sensitive  nose, 
straight  and  fine.  He  was  altogether  a  figure  of  world 
ly  splendor ;  and  I  had  reason  to  know  that  he  did  not 
let  the  credit  of  our  nation  suffer  at  the  most  aristo 
cratic  court  in  Europe  for  want  of  a  fit  diplomatic 
costume,  when  some  of  our  ministers  were  trying  to 
make  their  office  do  its  full  effect  upon  all  occasions  in 
"  the  dress  of  an  American  gentleman."  The  morn 
ing  after  his  arrival  Mr.  Motley  came  to  me  with  a 
handful  of  newspapers  which,  according  to  the  Aus 
trian  custom  at  that  day,  had  been  opened  in  the  Vene 
tian  post-office.  He  wished  me  to  protest  against  this 
on  his  behalf  as  an  infringement  of  his  diplomatic 
extra-territoriality,  and  I  proposed  to  go  at  once  to  the 
director  of  the  post :  I  had  myself  suffered  in  the  same 
way,  and  though  I  knew  that  a  mere  consul  was  help- 

94 


EOUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 

less,  I  was  willing  to  see  the  double-headed  eagle  trod 
den  under  foot  by  a  Minister  Plenipotentiary.  Mr. 
Motley  said  that  he  would  go  with  me,  and  we  put  off  in 
his  gondola  to  the  post-office.  The  director  received  us 
with  the  utmost  deference.  He  admitted  the  irregu 
larity  which  the  minister  complained  of,  and  declared 
that  he  had  no  choice  but  to  open  every  foreign  news 
paper,  to  whomsoever  addressed.  He  suggested,  how 
ever,  that  if  the  minister  made  his  appeal  to  the  Lieu 
tenant-Governor  of  Venice,  Count  Toggenburg  would 
no  doubt  instantly  order  the  exemption  of  his  news 
papers  from  the  general  rule. 

Mr.  Motley  said  he  would  give  himself  the  pleasure 
of  calling  upon  the  Lieutenant-Governor,  and  "  How 
fortunate,"  he  added,  when  we  were  got  back  into  the 
gondola,  "  that  I  should  have  happened  to  bring  my 
court  dress  with  me!"  I  did  not  see  the  encounter 
of  the  high  contending  powers,  but  I  know  that  it  end 
ed  in  a  complete  victory  for  our  minister. 

I  had  no  further  active  relations  of  an  official  kind 
with  Mr.  Motley,  except  in  the  case  of  a  naturalized 
American  citizen,  whose  property  was  slowly  but  sure 
ly  wasting  away  in  the  keeping  of  the  Venetian  courts 
An  order  had  at  last  been  given  for  the  surrender  of 
the  remnant  to  the  owner;  but  the  Lombardo-Venetian 
authorities  insisted  that  this  should  be  done  through 
the  United  States  Minister  at  Vienna,  and  Mr.  Mo 
held  as  firmly  that  it  must  be  done  through  the  Unite 
States  Consul  at  Venice.     I  could  only  report  to  h 
from  time  to  time  the  unyielding  attitude  of  the  ( 
Tribunal,  and  at  last  he  consented,  as  he ;  wrote 
officiously,  not  officially,  in  the  matter,"  and  the  hap 
less  claimant  got  what  was  left  of  Ins  estate 

I  had  a  glimpse  of  the  historian  afterwards  in  I 
ton,  but  it  was  only  for  a  moment,  just  before  his  ap- 

95 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

pointment  to  England,  where  he  was  made  to  suffer  for 
Sumner  in  his  quarrel  with  Grant.  That  injustice 
crowned  the  injuries  his  country  had  done  a  most  faith 
ful  patriot  and  high-spirited  gentleman,  whose  fame  as 
an,  historian  once  filled  the  ear  of  the  English-speaking 
world.  His  books  seemed  to  have  been  written  in  a 
spirit  already  no  longer  modern ;  and  I  did  not  find  the 
greatest  of  them  so  moving  as  I  expected  when  I  came 
to  it  with  all  the  ardor  of  my  admiration  for  the  his 
torian.  William  the  Silent  seemed  to  me,  by  his 
worshipper's  own  showing,  scarcely  level  with  the 
popular  movement  which  he  did  not  so  much  direct  as 
follow ;  but  it  is  a  good  deal  for  a  prince  to  be  able  even 
to  follow  his  people ;  and  it  cannot  be  said  that  Motley 
does  not  fully  recognize  the  greatness  of  the  Dutch 
people,  though  he  may  see  the  Prince  of  Orange  too 
large.  The  study  of  their  character  made  at  least  a 
theoretical  democrat  of  a  scholar  whose  instincts  were 
not  perhaps  democratic,  and  his  sympathy  with  that 
brave  little  republic  between  the  dikes  strengthened  him 
in  his  fealty  to  the  great  commonwealth  between  the 
oceans.  I  believe  that  so  far  as  he  was  of  any  political 
tradition,  he  was  of  the  old  Boston  Whig  tradition; 
but  when  I  met  him  at  Venice  he  was  in  the  glow  of  a 
generous  pride  in  our  war  as  a  war  against  slavery. 
He  spoke  of  the  negroes  and  their  simple-hearted, 
single-minded  devotion  to  the  Union  cause  in  terms 
that  an  original  abolitionist  might  have  used,  at  a  time 
when  original  abolitionists  were  not  so  many  as  they 
have  since  become. 

For  the  rest,  I  fancy  it  was  very  well  for  us  to  be 
represented  at  Vienna  in  those  days  by  an  ideal  demo 
crat  who  was  also  a  real  swell,  and  who  was  not  likely 
to  discredit  us  socially  when  we  so  much  needed  to  be 
well  thought  of  in  every  way.  At  a  court  where  the 

96 


ROUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 

family  of  Count  Schmerling,  the  Prime  Minister, 
could  not  be  received  for  want  of  the  requisite  descents, 
it  was  well  to  have  a  minister  who  would  not  commit 
the  mistake  of  inviting  the  First  Society  to  meet  the 
Second  Society,  as  a  former  Envoy  Extraordinary  had 
done,  with  the  effect  of  finding  himself  left  entirely 
to  the  Second  Society  during  the  rest  of  his  stay  in 
Vienna. 

II 

One  of  my  consular  colleagues  under  Motley  was 
another  historian,  of  no  such  popularity,  indeed,  nor 
even  of  such  success,  but  perhaps  not  of  inferior  powers. 
This  was  Richard  Hildreth,  at  Trieste,  the  author  of 
one  of  the  sincerest  if  not  the  truest  histories  of 
the  United  States,  according  to  the  testimony  both  of  his 
liking  and  his  misliking  critics.  I  have  never  read  his 
history,  and  I  speak  of  it  only  at  second  hand;  but  I 
had  read,  before  I  met  him,  his  novel  of  Archy  Moore, 
or  The  White  Slave,  which  left  an  indelible  impres 
sion  of  his  imaginative  verity  upon  me.  The  impres 
sion  is  still  so  deep  that  after  the  lapse  of  nearly  forty 
years  since  I  saw  the  book,  I  have  no  misgiving  in 
speaking  of  it  as  a  powerful  piece  of  realism.  It 
treated  passionately,  intensely,  though  with  a  superficial 
coldness,  of  wrongs  now  so  remote  from  us  in  the  aboli 
tion  of  slavery  that  it  is  useless  to  hope  it  will  ever  be 
generally  read  hereafter,  but  it  can  safely  be  praised  to 
any  one  who  wishes  to  study  that  bygone  condition, 
and  the  literature  which  grew  out  of  it.  I  fancy  it  did 
not  lack  recognition  in  its  time,  altogether,  for  I  used 
to  see  it  in  Italian  and  French  translations  on  the  book 
stalls.  I  believe  neither  his  history  nor  his  novel 
brought  the  author  more  gain  than  fame.  He  had  worn 
himself  out  on  a  newspaper  when  he  got  his'appoint- 

97 


ment  at  Trieste,  and  I  saw  him  in  the  shadow  of  the 
cloud  that  was  wholly  to  darken  him  before  he  died. 
He  was  a  tall, thin  man,  absent,  silent:  already  a  phan 
tom  of  himself,  but  with  a  scholarly  serenity  and  dig 
nity  amidst  the  ruin,  when  the  worst  came. 

I  first  saw  him  at  the  pretty  villa  where  he  lived  in 
the  suburbs  of  Trieste,  and  where  I  passed  several  days, 
and  I  remember  him  always  reading,  reading,  reading. 
He  could  with  difficulty  be  roused  from  his  book  by 
some  strenuous  appeal  from  his  family  to  his  conscience 
as  a  host.  The  last  night  he  sat  with  Paradise  Lost 
in  his  hand,  and  nothing  could  win  him  from  it  till  he 
had  finished  it.  Then  he  rose  to  go  to  bed.  Would  not 
he  bid  his  parting  guest  good-bye  ?  The  idea  of  farewell 
perhaps  dimly  penetrated  to  him.  He  responded  with 
out  looking  round, 

"  They,  hand  in  hand,  with  wandering  steps  and  slow, 
Through  Eden  took  their  solitary  way," 

and  so  left  the  room. 

I  had  earlier  had  some  dealings  with  him  as  a  fellow- 
consul  concerning  a  deserter  from  an  American  ship 
whom  I  inherited  from  my  predecessor  at  Venice.  The 
man  had  already  been  four  or  five  months  in  prison, 
and  he  was  in  a  fair  way  to  end  his  life  there ;  for  it  is 
our  law  that  a  deserting  sailor  must  be  kept  in  the  con 
sul's  custody  till  some  vessel  of  our  flag  arrives,  when 
the  consul  can  oblige  the  master  to  take  the  deserter 
and  let  him  work  his  passage  home.  Such  a  vessel 
rarely  came  to  Venice  even  in  times  of  peace,  and  in 
times  of  war  there  was  no  hope  of  any.  So  I  got  leave 
of  the  consul  at  Trieste  to  transfer  my  captive  to  that 
port,  where  now  and  then  an  American  ship  did  touch. 
The  flag  determines  the  nationality  of  the  sailor,  and 
this  unhappy  wretch  was  theoretically  our  fellow-citi- 

,98 


ROUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 

zen;  but  when  lie  got  to  Trieste  he  made  a  clean  breast 
of  it  to  the  consul.  He  confessed  that  when  he  shipped 
under  our  flag  he  was  a  deserter  from  a  British  regi 
ment  at  Malta ;  and  he  begged  piteously  not  to  be  sent 
home  to  America,  where  he  had  never  been  in  his  life, 
nor^ever  wished  to  be.  He  wished  to  be  sent  back  to  his 
regiment  at  Malta,  and  to  whatever  fate  awaited  him 
there.  The  case  certainly  had  its  embarrassments ;  but 
the  American  consul  contrived  to  let  our  presumptive 
compatriot  slip  into  the  keeping  of  the  British  consul, 
who  promptly  shipped  him  to  Malta.  In  view  of  the 
strained  relations  between  England  and  America  at  that 
time  this  was  a  piece  of  masterly  diplomacy. 

Besides  my  old  Ohio-time  friend  Moncure  D.  Con- 
way,  who  paid  us  a  visit,  and  in  his  immediate  rela 
tions  with  literary  Boston  seemed  to  bring  the  moun 
tain  to  Mahomet,  I  saw  no  one  else  more  literary  than 
Henry  Ward  Beecher.  He  was  passing  through  Venice 
on  his  way  to  those  efforts  in  England  in  behalf  of  the 
Union  which  had  a  certain  great  effect  at  the  time ;  and 
in  the  tiny  parlor  of  our  apartment  on  the  Grand  Canal, 
I  can  still  see  him  sitting  athletic,  almost  pugilistic,  of 
presence,  with  his  strong  face,  but  kind,  framed  in  long 
hair  that  swept  above  his  massive  forehead,  and  fell  to 
the  level  of  his  humorously  smiling  mouth.  His  eyes 
quaintly  gleamed  at  the  things  we  told  him  of  our  life 
in  the  strange  place ;  but  he  only  partly  relaxed  from  his 
strenuous  pose,  and  the  hands  that  lay  upon  his  knees 
were  clinched.  Afterwards,  as  he  passed  our  balcony 
in  a  gondola,  he  lifted  the  brave  red  fez  he  was  wearing 
(many  people  wore  the  fez  for  one  caprice  or  another) 
and  saluted  our  eagle  and  us:  we  were  often  on  tliD 
balcony  behind  the  shield  to  attest  the  authenticity  of 
the  American  eagle. 


LITEKAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 


III 

Before  I  left  Venice,  however,  there  came  a  turn  in 
my  literary  luck,  and  from  the  hand  I  could  most  have 
wished  to  reverse  the  adverse  wheel  of  fortune.  I  had 
labored  out  with  great  pains  a  paper  on  recent  Italian 
comedy,  which  I  sent  to  Lowell,  then  with  his  friend 
Professor  Norton  jointly  editor  of  the  North  American 
Review;  and  he  took  it  and  wrote  me  one  of  his  loveli 
est  letters  about  it,  consoling  me  in  an  instant  for  all 
the  defeat  I  had  undergone,  and  making  it  sweet  and 
worthy  to  have  lived  through  that  misery.  It  is  one  of 
the  hard  conditions  of  this  state  that  while  we  can  most 
ly  make  out  to  let  people  taste  the  last  drop  of  bitter 
ness  and  ill-will  that  is  in  us,  our  love  and  gratitude  are 
only  semi-articulate  at  the  best,  and  usually  altogether 
tongue-tied.  As  often  as  I  tried  afterwards  to  tell  Low 
ell  of  the  benediction,  the  salvation,  his  letter  was  to 
me,  I  failed.  But  perhaps  he  would  not  have  under 
stood,  if  I  had  spoken  out  all  that  was  in  me  with  the 
fulness  I  could  have  given  a  resentment.  His  mes 
sage  came  after  years  of  thwarted  endeavor,  and  rein 
stated  me  in  the  belief  that  I  could  still  do  something 
in  literature.  To  be  sure,  the  letters  in  the  Advertiser 
had  begun  to  make  their  impression;  among  the  first 
great  pleasures  they  brought  me  was  a  recognition  from 
my  diplomatic  chief  at  Vienna;  but  I  valued  my  ad 
mission  to  the  North  American  peculiarly  because  it 
was  Lowell  let  me  in,  and  because  I  felt  that  in  his 
charge  it  must  be  the  place  of  highest  honor.  He  spoke 
of  the  pay  for  my  article,  in  his  letter,  and  asked  me 
where  he  should  send  it,  and  I  answered,  to  my  father- 
in-law,  who  put  it  in  his  savings-bank,  where  he  lived, 
in  Brattleboro,  Vermont.  There  it  remained,  and  I  for- 

100 


KOUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 

got  all  about  it,  so  that  when  his  affairs  were  settled 
some  years  later  and  I  was  notified  that  there  was  a  sum 
to  my  credit  in  the  bank,  I  said,  with  the  confidence  I 
have  nearly  always  felt  when  wrong,  that  I  had  no 
money  there.  The  proof  of  my  error  was  sent  me  in  a 
check,  and  then  I  bethought  me  of  the  pay  for  "  Recent 
Italian  Comedy." 

It  was  not  a  day  when  I  could  really  afford  to  forget 
money  due  me,  but  then  it  was  not  a  great  deal  of 
money.  The  Review  was  as  poor  as  it  was  proud,  and 
I  had  two  dollars  a  printed  page  for  my  paper.  But 
this  was  more  than  I  got  from  the  Advertiser,  which 
gave  me  five  dollars  a  column  for  my  letters,  printed  in 
a  type  so  fine  that  the  money,  when  translated  from 
greenbacks  into  gold  at  a  discount  of  $2.80,  must  have 
been  about  a  dollar  a  thousand  words.  However,  I  was 
richly  content  with  that,  and  would  gladly  have  let  them 
have  the  letters  for  nothing. 

Before  I  left  Venice  I  had  made  my  sketches  into  a 
book,  which  I  sent  on  to  Messrs.  Triibner  £  Co.,  in 
London.  They  had  consented  to  look  at  it  to  oblige  my 
friend  Conway,  who  during  his  sojourn  with  us  in 
Venice,  before  his  settlement  in  London,  had  been 
forced  to  listen  to  some  of  it.  They  answered  me  in 
due  time  that  they  would  publish  an  edition  of  a  thou 
sand,  at  half  profits,  if  I  could  get  some  American 
house  to  take  five  hundred  copies.  When  I  stopped  in 
London  I  had  so  little  hope  of  being  able  to  do  this  that 
I  asked  the  Triibners  if  I  might,  without  losing  their 
offer  try  to  get  some  other  London  house  to  publish 
mv  book.  They  said  Yes,  almost  joyously ;  and  I  began 
to"  take  my  manuscript  about.  At  most  places 
would  not  look  at  me  or  it,  and  they  nowhere  consente 
to  read  it.  The  house  promptest  in  refusing 
sider  it  afterwards  pirated  one  of  my  novels,  and  with 

101 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

some  expressions  of  good  intention  in  that  direction, 
never  paid  me  anything  for  it;  though  I  believe  the 
English  still  think  that  this  sort  of  behavior  was  pecul 
iar  to  the  American  publisher  in  the  old  buccaneering 
times.  I  was  glad  to  go  back  to  the  Triibners  with  my 
book,  and  on  my  way  across  the  Atlantic  I  met  a  pub 
lisher  who  finally  agreed  to  take  those  five  hundred 
copies.  This  was  Mr.  M.  M.  Ilurd,  of  Ilurd  &  Hough- 
ton,  a  house  then  newly  established  in  New  York  and 
Cambridge.  We  played  ring-toss  and  shuffleboard  to 
gether,  and  became  of  a  friendship  which  lasts  to  this 
day.  But  it  was  not  till  some  months  later,  when  I  saw 
him  in  !N^ew  York,  that  he  consented  to  publish  my 
book.  I  remember  how  he  said,  with  an  air  of  vague 
misgiving,  and  an  effect  of  trying  to  justify  himself 
in  an  imprudence,  that  it  was  not  a  great  matter  any 
way.  I  perceived  that  he  had  no  faith  in  it,  and  to  tell 
the  truth  I  had  not  much  myself.  But  the  book  had  an 
instant  success,  and  it  has  gone  on  from  edition  to  edi 
tion  ever  since.  There  was  just  then  the  interest  of  a 
not  wholly  generous  surprise  at  American  things  among 
the  English.  Our  success  in  putting  down  the  great 
Confederate  rebellion  had  caught  the  fancy  of  our 
cousins,  and  I  think  it  was  to  this  mood  of  theirs  that 
I  owed  largely  the  kindness  they  showed  my  book. 
There  were  long  and  cordial  reviews  in  all  the  great 
London  journals,  which  I  used  to  carry  about  with  me 
like  love-letters ;  when  I  tried  to  show  them  to  other 
people,  I  could  not  understand  their  coldness  concern 
ing  them. 

At  Boston,  where  we  landed  on  our  return  home, 
there  was  a  moment  when  it  seemed  as  if  my  small 
destiny  might  be  linked  at  once  with  that  of  the  city 
which  later  became  my  home.  I  ran  into  the  office  of 
the  Advertiser  to  ask  what  had  become  of  some  sketches 

102 


of  ^  Italian  travel  I  had  sent  the  paper,  and  the  man- 
aging  editor  made  me  promise  not  to  take  a  place  any 
where  before  I  had  heard  from  him.  I  gladly  prom 
ised,  but  I  did  not  hear  from  him,  and  when  I  returned 
to  Boston  a  fortnight  later,  I  found  that  a  fatal  partner 
had  refused  to  agree  with  him  in  engaging  me  upon  the 
paper.  They  even  gave  me  back  half  a  dozen  imprinted 
letters  of  mine,  and  I  published  them  in  the  Nation,  of 
New  York,  and  afterwards  in  the  book  called  Italian 
Journeys. 

But  after  I  had  encountered  fortune  in  this  frown 
ing  disguise,  I  had  a  most  joyful  little  visit  with  Lowell, 
which  made  me  forget  there  was  anything  in  the  world 
but  the  delight  and  glory  of  sitting  with  him  in  his 
study  at  Elmwood  and  hearing  him  talk.  It  must  have 
been  my  freshness  from  Italy  which  made  him  talk 
chiefly  of  his  own  happy  days  in  the  land  which  so 
sympathetically  brevets  all  its  lovers  fellow-citizens. 
At  any  rate  he  would  talk  of  hardly  anything  else,  and 
he  talked  late  into  the  night,  and  early  into  the  morn 
ing.  About  two  o'clock,  when  all  the  house  was  still, 
he  lighted  a  candle,  and  went  down  into  the  cellar,  and 
came  back  with  certain  bottles  under  his  arms.  I  had 
not  a  very  learned  palate  in  those  days  (or  in  these,  for 
that  matter),  but  I  knew  enough  of  wine  to  under 
stand  that  these  bottles  had  been  chosen  upon  that  prin 
ciple  which  Longfellow  put  in  verse,  and  used  to  re 
peat  with  a  humorous  lifting  of  the  eyebrows  and  hol 
lowing  of  the  voice : 

"  If  you  have  a  friend  to  dine, 
Give  him  your  best  wine; 
If  you  have  two, 
The  second-best  will  do." 

As  we  sat  in  their  mellow  afterglow,  Lowell  spoke  to 
me  of  my  own  life  and  prospects,  wisely  and  truly,  as 

103 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

he  always  spoke.  He  said  that  it  was  enough  for  a  man 
who  had  stuff  in  him  to  be  known  to  two  or  three  peo 
ple,  for  they  would  not  suffer  him  to  be  forgotten,  and 
it  would  rest  with  himself  to  get  on.  I  told  him  that 
though  I  had  not  given  up  my  place  at  Venice,  I  was 
not  going  back,  if  I  could  find  anything  to  do  at  home, 
and  I  was  now  on  my  way  to  Ohio,  where  I  should  try 
my  best  to  find  something;  at  the  worst,  I  could  turn  to 
my  trade  of  printer.  He  did  not  think  it  need  ever 
come  to  that;  and  he  said  that  he  believed  I  should 
have  an  advantage  with  readers,  if  not  with  editors,  in 
hailing  from  the  West ;  I  should  be  more  of  a  novelty. 
I  knew  very  well  that  even  in  my  own  West  I  should 
not  have  this  advantage  unless  I  appeared  there  with  an 
Eastern  imprint,  but  I  'could  not  wish  to  urge  my  mis 
giving  against  his  faith.  Was  I  not  already  richly  suc 
cessful  ?  What  better  thing  personally  could  befall 
me,  if  I  lived  forever  after  on  milk  and  honey,  than 
to  be  sitting  there  with  my  hero,  my  master,  and  hav 
ing  him  talk  to  me  as  if  we  were  equal  in  deed  and  in 
fame? 

The  cat-bird  called  in  the  syringa  thicket  at  his  door, 
before  we  said  the  good-night  which  was  good-morning, 
using  the  sweet  Italian  words,  and  bidding  each  other 
the  Dorrna  bcne  which  has  the  quality  of  a  benediction. 
He  held  my  hand,  and  looked  into  my  eyes  with  the 
sunny  kindness  which  never  failed  me,  worthy  or  un 
worthy  ;  and  I  went  away  to  bed.  But  not  to  sleep ; 
only  to  dream  such  dreams  as  fill  the  heart  of  youth 
when  the  recognition  of  its  endeavor  has  come  from  the 
achievement  it  holds  highest  and  best. 


ROUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 

IV 

I  found  nothing  to  do  in  Ohio;  some  places  that  1 
heard  of  proved  impossible  one  way  or  another,  in 
Columbus  and  Cleveland,  and  Cincinnati;  there  was 
always  the  fatal  partner ;  and  after  three  weeks  I  was 
again  in  the  East.  I  came  to  New  York,  resolved  to 
fight  my  way  in,  somewhere,  and  I  did  not  rest  a  mo 
ment  before  I  began  the  fight. 

My  notion  was  that  which  afterwards  became  Bartley 
Hubbard's.  "  Get  a  basis,"  said  the  softening  cynic  of 
the  Saturday  Press,  when  I  advised  with  him,  among 
other  acquaintances.  "  Get  a  salaried  place,  something 
regular  on  some  paper,  and  then  you  can  easily  make 
up  the  rest."  But  it  was  a  month  before  I  achieved  this 
vantage,  and  then  I  got  it  in  a  quarter  where  I  had  not 
looked  for  it.  I  wrote  editorials  on  European  and  lit 
erary  topics  for  different  papers,  but  mostly  for  the 
Times,  and  they  paid  me  well  and  more  than  well ;  but 
I  \vas  nowhere  offered  a  basis,  though  once  I  got  so  far 
towards  it  as  to  secure  a  personal  interview  with  the 
editor-in-chief,  who  made  me  feel  that  I  had  seldom 
met  so  busy  a  man.  He  praised  some  work  of  mine 
that  he  had  read  in  his  paper,  but  I  was  never  recalled 
to  his  presence ;  and  now  I  think  he  judged  rightly  that 
I  should  not  be  a  lastingly  good  journalist.  My  point 
of  view  was  artistic;  I  wanted  time  to  prepare  my 
effects. 

There  was  another  and  clearer  prospect  opened  to 
me  on  a  literary  paper,  then  newly  come  to  the  light, 
but  long  since  gone  out  in  the  dark.  Here  again  my 
work  was  taken,  and  liked  so  much  that  I  was  offered 
the  basis  (at  twenty  dollars  a  week)  that  I  desired;  I 
was  even  assigned  to  a  desk  where  I  should  write  in  the 
office ;  and  the  next  morning  I  came  joyfully  down  to 

105 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Spruce  Street  to  occupy  it.  But  I  was  met  at  the  door 
by  one  of  the  editors,  who  said  lightly,  as  if  it  were  a 
trifling  affair,  "  Well,  we've  concluded  to  waive  the  idea 
of  an  engagement,"  and  once  more  my  bright  hopes  of 
a  basis  dispersed  themselves.  I  said,  with  what  calm 
I  could,  that  they  must  do  what  they  thought  best,  and 
I  went  on  skirmishing  baselessly  about  for  this  and  the 
other  papers  which  had  been  buying  my  material. 

I  had  begun  printing  in  the  Nation  those  letters 
about  my  Italian  journeys  left  over  from  the  Boston 
Advertise)';  they  had  been  liked  in  the  office,  and  one 
day  the  editor  astonished  and  delighted  me  by  asking 
how  I  would  fancy  giving  up  outside  work  to  come 
there  and  write  only  for  the  Nation.  We  averaged  my 
gains  from  all  sources  at  forty  dollars  a  week,  and  I 
had  my  basis  as  unexpectedly  as  if  I  had  dropped  upon 
it  from  the  skies. 

This  must  have  been  some  time  in  November,  and 
the  next  three  or  four  months  were  as  happy  a  time  for 
me  as  I  have  ever  known.  I  kept  on  printing  my 
Italian  material  in  the  Nation;  I  wrote  criticisms  for  it 
(not  very  good  criticisms,  I  think  now),  and  I  amused 
myself  very  much  with  the  treatment  of  social  phases 
and  events  in  a  department  which  grew  up  under  my 
hand.  My  associations  personally  were  of  the  most 
agreeable  kind.  I  worked  with  joy,  with  ardor,  and  I 
liked  so  much  to  be  there,  in  that  place  and  in  that  com 
pany,  that  I  hated  to  have  each  day  come  to  an  end. 

I  believed  that  my  lines  were  cast  in  New  York  for 
good  and  all ;  and  I  renewed  my  relations  with  the  lit 
erary  friends  I  had  made  before  going  abroad.  I  often 
stopped,  on  my  way  up  town,  at  an  apartment  the  Stod- 
dards  had  in  Lafayette  Place,  or  near  it;  I  saw  Sted- 
man,  and  reasoned  high,  to  my  heart's  content,  of  lit 
erary  things  with  them  and  him. 

106 


ROUNDABOUT   TO  BOSTON 

With  the  winter  Bayard  Taylor  came  on  from  hi* 
home    in    Kennctt   and   took   an    apartment    in   East 
Twelfth  Street,  and  once  a  week  Mrs.  Taylor  and  he 
received   all  their  friends  there,  with  a  simple  and 
charming  hospitality.     There  was  another  house  which 
we  much  resorted  to— the  house  of  James  Lorrimer 
Graham,  afterwards  Consul-General  at  Florence,  where 
he  died.     I  had  made  his  acquaintance  at  Venice  three 
years  before,  and  I  came  in  for  my  share  of  that  love 
for  literary  men  which  all  their  perversities  could  not 
extinguish  in  him.    It  was  a  veritable  passion,  which  I 
used  to  think  he  could  not  have  felt  so  deeply  if  he  had 
been  a  literary  man  himself.     There  were  delightful 
dinners  at  his  house,  where  the  wit  of  the  Stoddards 
shone,  and  Taylor  beamed  with  joyous  good-fellowship 
and  overflowed  with  invention;  and  Huntington,  long 
Paris  correspondent  of  the  Tribune,  humorously  tried 
to  talk  himself  into  the  resolution  of  spending  the  rest 
of  his  life  in  his  own  country.    There  was  one  evening 
when  G.  P.  Cranch,  always  of  a  most  pensive  presence 
and  aspect,  sang  the  most  killingly  comic  songs;  and 
there  was  another  evening  when,  after  we  all  went  into 
the    library,    something    tragical    happened.     Edwin 
Booth  was  of  our  number,  a  gentle,  rather  silent  per 
son  in  company,  or  with  at  least  little  social  initia 
tive,  who,  as  his  fate  would,  went  up  to  the  cast  of  a 
huge  hand  that  lay  upon  one  of  the  shelves.     "  Whose 
hand  is  this,  Lorry  ?"  he  asked  our  host,  as  he  took  it  up 
and  turned  it  over  in  both  his  own  hands.     Graham 
feigned  not  to  hear,  and  Booth  asked  again,  "  Whose 
hand  is  this?"     Then  there  was  nothing  for  Graham 
but  to  say,  "It's  Lincoln's  hand,"  and  the  man  for 
whom  it  meant  such  unspeakable  things  put  it  softly 
down  without  a  word. 

107 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 


It  was  one  of  the  disappointments  of  a  time  which 
was  nearly  all  joy  that  I  did  not  then  meet  a  man  who 
meant  hardly  less  than  Lowell  himself  for  me.  George 
William  Curtis  was  during  my  first  winter  in  New 
York  away  on  one  of  the  long  lecturing  rounds  to  which 
he  gave  so  many  of  his  winters,  and  I  did  not  see  him 
till  seven  years  afterwards,  at  Mr.  Norton's  in  Cam 
bridge.  He  then  characteristically  spent  most  of  the 
evening  in  discussing  an  ohscure  point  in  Browning's 
poem  of  My  Last  Duchess.  I  have  long  forgotten  what 
the  point  was,  but  not  the  charm  of  Curtis's  person 
ality,  his  fine  presence,  his  benign  politeness,  his  almost 
deferential  tolerance  of  difference  in  opinion.  After 
wards  I  saw  him  again  and  again  in  Boston  and  New 
York,  but  always  with  a  sense  of  something  elusive  in 
his  graciousness,  for  which  something  in  me  must  have 
been  to  blame.  Cold,  he  was  not,  even  to  the  youth 
that  in  those  days  was  apt  to  shiver  in  any  but  the 
higher  temperatures,  and  yet  I  felt  that  I  made  no 
advance  in  his  kindness  towards  anything  like  the 
friendship  I  knew  in  the  Cambridge  men.  Perhaps  I 
was  so  thoroughly  attuned  to  their  mood  that  I  could 
not  be  put  in  unison  with  another;  and  perhaps  in 
Curtis  there  was  really  not  the  material  of  much  in 
timacy. 

He  had  the  potentiality  of  publicity  in  the  sort  of 
welcome  he  gave  equally  to  all  men;  and  if  I  asked 
more  I  was  not  reasonable.  Yet  he  was  never  far  from 
any  man  of  good  -  will,  and  he  was  the  intimate  of 
multitudes  whose  several  existence  he  never  dreamt  of. 
In  this  sort  he  had  become  my  friend  when  he  made 
his  first  great  speech  on  the  Kansas  question  in  1855, 

108 


ROUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 

which  will  seem  as  remote  to  the  young  men  of  this 
day  as  the  Thermopylae  question  to  which  he  likened 
it.  I  was  his  admirer,  his  lover,  his  worshipper  be 
fore  that  for  the  things  he  had  done  in  literature,  for 
the  Howadji  books,  and  for  the  lovely  fantasies  of 
Prue  and  I,  and  for  the  sound-hearted  satire  of  the 
Potiphar  Papers,  and  now  suddenly  I  learnt  that 
this  brilliant  and  graceful  talent,  this  travelled  and 
accomplished  gentleman,  this  star  of  society  who  had 
dazzled  me  with  his  splendor  far  off  in  my  Western 
village  obscurity,  was  a  man  with  the  heart  to  feel 
the  wrongs  of  men  so  little  friended  then  as  to  be 
denied  all  the  rights  of  men.  I  do  not  remember 
any  passage  of  the  speech,  or  any  word  of  it,  but  I 
remember  the  joy,  the  pride  with  which  the  soul  of 
youth  recognizes  in  the  greatness  it  has  honored  the 
goodness  it  may  love.  Mere  politicians  might  be  pro- 
slavery  or  anti-slavery  without  touching  me  very  much, 
but  here  was  the  citizen  of  a  world  far  greater  than 
theirs,  a  light  of  the  universal  republic  of  letters,  who 
was  willing  and  eager  to  stand  or  fall  with  the  just 
cause,  and  that  was  all  in  all  to  me.  His  country  was 
my  country,  and  his  kindred  my  kindred,  and  nothing 
could  have  kept  me  from  following  after  him. 

His  whole  life  taught  the  lesson  that  the  world  is 
well  lost  whenever  the  world  is  wrong;  but  never,  I 
think,  did  any  life  teach  this  so  sweetly,  so  winningly. 
The  wrong  world  itself  might  have  been  entreated  by 
him  to  be^  right,  for  he  was  one  of  the  few  reformers 
who  have  not  in  some  measure  mixed  their  love  of  man 
with  hate  of  men;  his  quarrel  was  with  error,  and  not 
with  the  persons  who  were  in  it.  He  was  so  gently 
steadfast  in  his  opinions  that  no  one  ever  thought 
him  as  a  fanatic,  though  many  who  held  his  opinions 
were  assailed  as  fanatics,  and  suffered  the  shame  if  they 

109 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

did  not  win  the  palm  of  martyrdom.  In  early  life  he 
was  a  communist,  and  then  when  he  came  out  of  Brook 
Farm  into  the  world  which  he  was  so  well  fitted  to 
adorn,  and  which  would  so  gladly  have  kept  him  all 
its  own,  he  became  an  abolitionist  in  the  very  teeth  of 
the  world  which  abhorred  abolitionists.  He  was  a  be 
liever  in  the  cause  of  women's  rights,  which  has  no 
picturesqueness,  and  which  chiefly  appeals  to  the  sense 
of  humor  in  the  men  who  never  dreamt  of  laughing  at 
him.  The  man  who  was  in  the  last  degree  amiable  was 
to  the  last  degree  unyielding  where  conscience  was  con 
cerned;  the  soul  which  was  so  tender  had  no  weakness 
in  it;  his  lenity  was  the  divination  of  a  finer  justice. 
His  honesty  made  all  men  trust  him  when  they  doubted 
his  opinions ;  his  good  sense  made  them  doubt  their  own 
opinions,  when  they  had  as  little  question  of  their  own 
honesty. 

I  should  not  find  it  easy  to  speak  of  him  as  a  man  of 
letters  only,  for  humanity  was  above  the  humanities 
with  him,  and  we  all  know  how  he  turned  from  the 
fairest  career  in  literature  to  tread  the  thorny  path  of 
politics  because  he  believed  that  duty  led  the  way,  and 
that  good  citizens  were  needed  more  than  good  ro 
mancers.  No  doubt  they  are,  and  yet  it  must  always  be 
a  keen  regret  with  the  men  of  my  generation  who  wit 
nessed  with  such  rapture  the  early  proofs  of  his  talent, 
that  he  could  not  have  devoted  it  wholly  to  the  beauti 
ful,  and  let  others  look  after  the  true.  Now  that  I 
have  said  this  I  am  half  ashamed  of  it,  for  I  know  well 
enough  that  what  he  did  was  best ;  but  if  my  regret  is 
mean,  I  will  let  it  remain,  for  it  is  faithful  to  the  mood 
which  many  have  been  in  concerning  him. 

There  can  be  no  dispute,  I  am  sure,  as  to  the  value 
of  some  of  the  results  he  achieved  in  that  other  path. 
He  did  indeed  create  anew  for  us  the  type  of  good-citi- 

110 


ROUNDABOUT  TO  BOSTON 

zenship,  wellnigh  effaced  in  a  sordid  and  selfish  time, 
and  of  an  honest  politician  and  a  pure-minded  journal 
ist.  He  never  really  forsook  literature,  and  the  world 
of  actual  interests  and  experiences  afforded  him  outlooks 
and  perspectives,  without  \vhich  [esthetic  endeavor  is 
self-limited  and  purblind.  He  was  a  great  man  of  let 
ters,  he  was  a  great  orator,  he  'was  a  great  political 
journalist,  he  was  a  great  citizen,  he  was  a  great  philan 
thropist.  But  that  last  word  with  its  conventional  ap 
plication  scarcely  describes  the  brave  and  gentle  friend 
of  men  that  he  was.  He  was  one  that  helped  others  by 
all  that  he  did,  and  said,  and  was,  and  the  circle  of  his 
use  was  as  wide  as  his  fame.  There  are  other  great 
men,  plenty  of  them,  common  great  men,  whom  we 
know  as  names  and  powers,  and  whom  we  willingly  let 
the  ages  have  when  they  die,  for,  living  or  dead,  they  are 
alike  remote  from  us.  They  have  never  been  with  us 
where  we  live ;  but  this  great  man  was  the  neighbor,  the 
contemporary,  and  the  friend  of  all  who  read  him  or 
heard  him ;  "and  even  in  the  swift  forgetting  of  this 
electrical  age  the  stamp  of  his  personality  will  not  be 
effaced  from  their  minds  or  hearts. 


VI 

Of  those  evenings  at  the  Taylors'  in  New  York,  I  can 
recall  best  the  one  which  was  most  significant  for  me, 
and  even  fatefully  significant.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Fields 
were  there,  from  Boston,  and  I  renewed  all  the  pleasure 
of  my  earlier  meetings  with  them.  At  the  end  Fields 
said,  mockingly,  "Don't  despise  Boston!"  and 
swered,  as  we  shook  hands,  "  Few  are  worthy  to  live  in 
Boston."  It  was  New-Year's  eve,  and  that  night  it  came 
on  to  snow  so  heavily  that  my  horse-car  could  hardly 
plough  its  way  up  to  Forty-seventh  Street  through  the 

111 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

drifts.  The  next  day,  and  the  next,  I  wrote  at  home, 
because  it  was  so  hard  to  get  down-town.  The  third  day 
I  reached  the  office  and  found  a  letter  on  my  desk  from 
Fields,  asking  how  I  should  like  to  come  to  Boston  and 
be  his  assistant  on  the  Atlantic  Monthly.  I  submitted 
the  matter  at  once  to  my  chief  on  the  Nation.,  and  with 
his  frank  good-will  I  talked  it  over  with  Mr.  Osgood,  of 
Ticknor  &  Fields,  who  was  to  see  me  further  about  it  if 
I  wished,  when  he  came  to  New  York ;  and  then  I  went 
to  Boston  to  see  Mr.  Fields  concerning  details.  I  was 
to  sift  all  the  manuscripts  and  correspond  with  con 
tributors  ;  I  was  to  do  the  literary  proof-reading  of  the 
magazine ;  and  I  was  to  write  the  four  or  five  pages  of 
book-notices,  which  were  then  printed  at  the  end  of  the 
periodical  in  finer  type ;  and  I  was  to  have  forty  dollars 
a  week.  I  said  that  I  was  getting  that  already  for  less 
work,  and  then  Mr.  Fields  offered  me  ten  dollars  more. 
Upon  these  terms  we  closed,  and  on  the  1st  of  March, 
which  was  my  twenty-ninth  birthday,  I  went  to  Boston 
and  began  my  work.  I  had  not  decided  to  accept  the 
place  without  advising  with  Lowell;  he  counselled  the 
step,  and  gave  me  some  shrewd  and  useful  suggestions. 
The  whole  affair  was  conducted  by  Fields  with  his  un 
failing  tact  and  kindness,  but  it  could  not  be  kept  from 
me  that  the  qualification  I  had  as  practical  printer  for 
the  work  was  most  valued,  if  not  the  most  valued,  and 
that  as  proof-reader  I  was  expected  to  make  it  avail  on 
the  side  of  economy.  Somewhere  in  life's  feast  the 
course  of  humble-pie  must  always  come  in ;  and  if  I  did 
not  wholly  relish  this  bit  of  it,  I  dare  say  it  was  good  for 
me,  and  I  digested  it  perfectly. 


part  ffouttb 
LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

A  MOXG  my  fellow-passengers  on  the  train  from 
-£*-  K"ew  York  to  Boston,  when  I  went  to  begin  my 
work  there  in  1366,  as  the  assistant  editor  of  the  At 
lantic  Monthly,  was  the  late  Samuel  Bowles,  of  the 
Springfield  Republican,  who  created  in  a  subordinate 
city  a  journal  of  metropolitan  importance.  I  had  met 
him  in  Venice  several  years  earlier,  when  he  was  suf 
fering  from  the  cruel  insomnia  which  had  followed 
his  overwork  on  that  newspaper,  and  when  he  told  me 
that  he  was  sleeping  scarcely  more  than  one  hour  out 
of  the  twenty-four.  His  worn  face  attested  the  misery 
which  this  must  have  been,  and  which  lasted  in  some 
measure  while  he  lived,  though  I  believe  that  rest 
and  travel  relieved  him  in  his  later  years.  He  was 
always  a  man  of  cordial  friendliness,  and  he  now  ex 
pressed  a  most  gratifying  interest  when  I  -told  him 
what  I  was  going  to  do  in  Boston.  He  gave  himself 
the  pleasure  of  descanting  upon  the  dramatic  quality 
of  the  fact  that  a  young  newspaper  man  from  Ohio  was 
about  to  share  in  the  destinies  of  the  great  literary 
periodical  of  iSTew  England. 


I  do  not  think  that  such  a  fact  would  now  move  the 
fancy  of  the  liveliest  newspaper  man,  so  much  has  the 

113. 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

West  since  returned  upon  the  East  in  a  refluent  wave 
of  authorship.  But  then  the  West  was  almost  an  un 
known  quality  in  our  literary  problem;  and  in  fact 
there  was  scarcely  any  literature  outside  of  New  Eng 
land.  Even  this  was  of  New  England  origin,  for  it 
was  almost  wholly  the  work  of  New  England  men 
and  women  in  the  "  splendid  exile "  of  New  York. 
The  Atlantic  Monthly,  which  was  distinctively  lit 
erary,  was  distinctively  a  New  England  magazine, 
though  from  the  first  it  had  been  characterized 
by  what  was  more  national,  what  was  more 
universal,  in  the  New  England  temperament.  Its 
chief  contributors  for  nearly  twenty  years  were 
Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes,  Whittier,  Emerson,  Doc 
tor  Hale,  Colonel  Higginson,  Mrs.  Stowe,  Whipple, 
Rose  Terry  Cooke,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,  Mrs.  Pres- 
cott  Spofford,  Mrs.  Phelps  Ward,  and  other  New  Eng 
land  writers  who  still  lived  in  New  England,  and 
largely  in  the  region  of  Boston.  Occasionally  there 
came  a  poem  from  Bryant,  at  New  York,  from  Mr. 
Stedman,  from  Mr.  Stoddard  and  Mrs.  Stoddard,  from 
Mr.  Aldrich,  and  from  Bayard  Taylor.  But  all  these, 
except  the  last,  were  not  only  of  New  England  race, 
but  of  New  England  birth.  I  think  there  was  no  con 
tributor  from  the  South  but  Mr.  M.  D.  Conway,  and  as 
yet  the  West  scarcely  counted,  though  four  young  poets 
from  Ohio,  who  were  not  immediately  or  remotely  of 
Puritan  origin,  had  appeared  in  early  numbers;  Alice 
Gary,  living  with  her  sister  in  New  York,  had  written 
now  and  then  from  the  beginning.  Mr.  John  Hay 
solely  represented  Illinois  by  a  single  paper,  and  he 
was  of  Rhode  Island  stock.  It  was  after  my  settle 
ment  at  Boston  that  Mark  Twain,  of  Missouri,  became 
a  figure  of  world-wide  fame  at  Hartford ;  and  longer 
after,  that  Mr.  Bret  Harte  made  that  progress  East- 

114 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

ward  from  California  which  was  telegraphed  almost 
from  hour  to  hour,  as  if  it  were  the  progress  of  a 
prince.  Miss  Constance  F.  Woolson  had  not  yet  be 
gun  to  write.  Mr.  James  Whitcomb  Riley,  Mr.  Mau 
rice  Thompson,  Miss  Edith  Thomas,  Octave  Thanet, 
Mr.  Charles  Warren  Stoddard,  Mr.  H.  B.  Fuller, 
Mrs.  Catherwood,  Mr.  Hamlin  Garland,  all  whom  I 
name  at  random  among  other  Western  writers,  were  then 
as  unknown  as  Mr.  Cable,  Miss  Murfree,  Mrs.  Rives 
Chanler,  Miss  Grace  King,  Mr.  Joel  Chandler  Harris, 
Mr.  Thomas  Nelson  Page,  in  the  South,  which  they  by 
no  means  fully  represent. 

The  editors  of  the  Atlantic  had  been  eager  from  the 
beginning  to  discover  any  outlying  literature;  but,  as 
I  have  said,  there  was  in  those  days  very  little  good 
writing  done  beyond  the  borders  of  New  England.  If 
the  case  is  now  different,  and  the  best  known  among 
living  American  writers  are  no  longer  New-England- 
ers,  still  I  do  not  think  the  South  and  West  have  yet 
trimmed  the  balance;  and  though  perhaps  the  new 
writers  now  more  commonly  appear  in  those  quarters, 
I  should  not  be  so  very  sure  that  they  are  not  still 
characterized  by  New  England  ideals  and  examples. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  am  very  sure  that  in  my  early  day 
we  were  characterized  by  them,  and  wished  to  be  so; 
we  even  felt  that  we  failed  in  so  far  as  we  expressed 
something  native  quite  in  our  own  way.  The  literary 
theories  we  accepted  were  New  England  theories,  the 
criticism  we  valued  was  New  England  criticism,  or, 
more  strictly  speaking,  Boston  theories,  Boston  criti 
cism. 

II 

Of  those  more  constant  contributors  to  the  'Atlantic 
I  have  mentioned,  it  is  of  course  known  that 

115 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Longfellow  and  Lowell  lived  in  Cambridge,  Emerson 
at  Concord,  and  Whittier  at  Amesbury.  Colonel  Hig- 
ginson  was  still  and  for  many  years  afterwards  at 
Newport ;  Mrs.  Stowe  was  then  at  Andover ;  Miss  Pres- 
cott  of  Newburyport  had  become  Mrs.  Spofford,  and 
was  presently  in  Boston,  where  her  husband  was  a 
member  of  the  General  Court;  Mrs.  Phelps  Ward,  as 
Miss  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps,  dwelt  in  her  father's 
house  at  Andover.  The  chief  of  the  Bostonians  were 
Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,  Doctor  Holmes,  and  Doctor 
Hale.  Yet  Boston  stood  for  the  whole  Massachusetts 
group,  and  Massachusetts,  in  the  literary  impulse, 
meant  New  England.  I  suppose  we  must  all  allow, 
whether  we  like  to  do  so  or  not,  that  the  impulse  seems 
now  to  have  pretty  well  spent  itself.  Certainly  the 
city  of  Boston  has  distinctly  waned  in  literature, 
though  it  has  waxed  in  wealth  and  population.  I  do 
not  think  there  are  in  Boston  to-day  even  so  many  tal 
ents  with  a  literary  coloring  in  law,  science,  theology, 
and  journalism  as  there  were  formerly;  though  I  have 
no  belief  that  the  Boston  talents  are  fewer  or  feebler 
than  before.  I  arrived  in  Boston,  however,  when  all 
talents  had  more  or  less  a  literary  coloring,  and  when 
the  greatest  talents  were  literary.  These  expressed 
with  ripened  fulness  a  civilization  conceived  in  faith 
and  brought  forth  in  good  works;  but  that  moment  of 
maturity  was  the  beginning  of  a  decadence  which 
could  only  show  itself  much  later.  New  England  has 
ceased  to  be  a  nation  in  itself,  and  it  will  perhaps  never 
again  have  anything  like  a  national  literature;  but 
that  was  something  like  a  national  literature;  and  it 
will  probably  be  centuries  yet  before  the  life  of  the 
whole  country,  the  American  life  as  distinguished 
from  the  New  England  life,  shall  have  anything  so 
like  a  national  literature.  It  will  be  long  before  our 

116 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

larger  life  interprets  itself  in  such  imagination  as 
Hawthorne's,  such  wisdom  as  Emerson's,  such  poetry 
as  Longfellow's,  such  prophecy  as  Whittier's,  such  wit 
and  grace  as  Holmes's,  such  humor  and  humanity  as 

Tin  <* 

Lowell's. 

The  literature  of  those  great  men  was,  if  I  may  suf 
fer  myself  the  figure,  the  Socinian  graft  of  a  Calvinist 
stock.  Their  faith,  in  its  varied  shades,  was  Unitari 
an,  but  their  art  was  Puritan.  So  far  as  it  was  imper 
fect — and  great  and  beautiful  as  it  was,  I  think  it  had 
its  imperfections — it  was  marred  by  the  intense  ethi- 
cism  that  pervaded  the  New  England  mind  for  two 
hundred  years,  and  that  still  characterizes  it.  They 
or  their  fathers  had  broken  away  from  orthodoxy  in 
the  great  schism  at  the  beginning  of  the  century,  but, 
as  if  their  heterodoxy  were  conscience-stricken,  they 
still  helplessly  pointed  the  moral  in  all  they  did ;  some 
pointed  it  more  directly,  some  less  directly;  but  they 
all  pointed  it.  I  should  be  far  from  blaming  them 
for  their  ethical  intention,  though  I  think  they  felt 
their  vocation  as  prophets  too  much  for  their  good  as 
poets.  Sometimes  they  sacrificed  the  song  to  the  ser 
mon,  though  not  always,  nor  nearly  always.  It  was  in 
poetry  and  in  romance  that  they  excelled ;  in  the  novel, 
so  far  as  they  attempted  it,  they  failed.  I  say  this 
with  the  names  of  all  the  Bostonian  group,  and  those 
they  influenced,  in  mind,  and  with  a  full  sense  of  their 
greatness.  It  may  be  ungracious  to  say  that  they  have 
left  no  heirs  to  their  peculiar  greatness ;  but  it  would 
be  foolish  to  say  that  they  left  an  estate  where  they  had 
none  to  bequeath.  One  cannot  take  account  of  such  a 
fantasy  as  Judd's  Margaret.  The  only  New-England- 
er  who  has  attempted  the  novel  on  a  scale  proportioned 
to  the  work  of  the  New-Englanders  in  philosophy,  in 
poetry,  in  romance,  is  Mr.  De  Forest,  who  is  of  New 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Haven,  and  not  of  Boston.  I  do  not  forget  the  fictions 
of  Doctor  Holmes,  or  the  vivid  inventions  of  Doctor 
Hale,  but  I  do  not  call  them  novels ;  and  I  do  not  for 
get  the  exquisitely  realistic  art  of  Miss  Jewett  or  Miss 
Wilkins,  which  is  free  from  the  ethicism  of  the  great 
New  England  group,  but  which  has  hardly  the  novel- 
ists's  scope.  New  England,  in  Hawthorne's  work, 
achieved  supremacy  in  romance ;  but  the  romance  is 
always  an  allegory,  and  the  novel  is  a  picture  in  which 
the  truth  to  life  is  suffered  to  do  its  unsermonized 
office  for  conduct;  and  New  England  yet  lacks  her 
novelist,  because  it  was  her  instinct  and  her  conscience 
in  fiction  to  be  true  to  an  ideal  of  life  rather  than  to  life 
itself. 

Even  when  we  come  to  the  exception  that  proves  the 
rule,  even  to  such  a  signal  exception  as  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,  I  think  that  what  I  say  holds  true.  That  is 
almost  the  greatest  work  of  imagination  that  we  have 
produced  in  prose,  and  it  is  the  work  of  a  New  Eng 
land  woman,  writing  from  all  the  inspirations  and  tra 
ditions  of  New  England.  It  is  like  begging  the  ques 
tion  to  say  that  I  do  not  call  it  a  novel,  however;  but 
really,  is  it  a  novel,  in  the  sense  that  War  and  Peace 
is  a  novel,  or  Madame  Flaubert,  or  L'Assommoir,  or 
Fhineas  Finn,  or  Dona  Perfecta,  or  Esther  Waters, 
or  Maria  y  Maria,  or  The  Return  of  the  Native,  or 
Virgin  Soil,  or  David  Grieve?  In  a  certain  way  it  is 
greater  than  any  of  these  except  the  first ;  but  its  chief 
virtue,  or  its  prime  virtue,  is  in  its  address  to  the  con 
science,  and  not  its  address  to  the  taste;  to  the  ethical 
sense,  not  the  aesthetical  sense. 

This  does  not  quite  say  the  thing,  but  it  suggests  it, 
and  I  should  be  sorry  if  it  conveyed  to  any  reader  a 
sense  of  slight ;  for  I  believe  no  one  has  felt  more  deep 
ly  than  myself  the  value  of  New  England  in  literature. 

118 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

The  comparison  of  the  literary  situation  at  Boston  to 
the  literary  situation  at  Edinburgh  in  the  times  of  the 
reviewers  has  never  seemed  to  me  accurate  or  adequate, 
and  it  holds  chiefly  in  the  fact  that  both  seem  to  be  of 
the  past.  Certainly  New  York  is  yet  no  London  in 
literature,  and  I  think  Boston  was  once  vastly  more 
than  Edinburgh  ever  was,  at  least  in  quality.  The 
Scotch  literature  of  the  palmy  days  was  not  wholly 
Scotch,  and  even  when  it  was  rooted  in  Scotch  soil  it 
flowered  in  the  air  of  an  alien  speech.  But  the  New 
England  literature  of  the  great  day  was  the  blossom  of 
a  New  England  root ;  and  the  language  which  the  Bos- 
tonians  wrote  was  the  native  English  of  scholars  fitly 
the  heirs  of  those  who  had  brought  the  learning  of  the 
universities  to  Massachusetts  Bay  two  hundred  years 
before,  and  was  of  as  pure  a  lineage  as  the  English  of 
the  mother-country. 

Ill 

The  literary  situation  which  confronted  me  when  I 
came  to  Boston  was,  then,  as  native  as  could  well  be; 
and  whatever  value  I  may  be  able  to  give  a  personal 
study  of  it  will  be  from  the  effect  it  made  upon  me  as 
one  strange  in  everything  but  sympathy.  I  will  not 
pretend  that  I  saw  it  in  its  entirety,  and  I  have  no  hope 
of  presenting  anything  like  a  kinetoscopic  impression 
of  it.  What  I  can  do  is  to  give  here  and  there  a  glimpse 
of  it ;  and  I  shall  wish  the  reader  to  keep  in  mind  the 
fact  that  it  was  in  a  "  state  of  transition,"  as  everything 
is  always  and  everywhere.  It  was  no  sooner  recog 
nizably  "native  than  it  ceased  to  be  fully  so;  and  I  be 
came  a  witness  of  it  after  the  change  had  begun.  The 
publishing  house  which  so  long  embodied  New  England 
literature'  was  already  attempting  enterprises  out  of 
the  line  of  its  traditions,  and  one  of  these  had  brought 

119 


LITERAEY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Mr.  T.  B.  Aldrich  from  New  York,  a  few  weeks  be 
fore  I  arrived  upon  the  scene  in  that  dramatic  quality 
which  I  think  never  impressed  any  one  but  Mr.  Bowles. 
Mr.  Aldrich  was  the  editor  of  Every  Saturday  when  I 
came  to  be  assistant  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly. 
We  were  of  nearly  the  same  age,  but  he  had  a  distinct 
and  distinguished  priority  of  reputation,  insomuch  that 
in  my  Western  remoteness  I  had  always  ranged  him 
with  such  elders  and  betters  of  mine  as  Holmes  and 
Lowell,  and  never  imagined  him  the  blond,  slight  youth 
I  found  him,  with  every  imaginable  charm  of  contem 
poraneity.  It  is  no  part  of  the  office  which  I  have  in 
tended  for  these  slight  and  sufficiently  wandering 
glimpses  of  the  past  to  show  any  writer  in  his  final 
place;  and  above  all  I  do  not  presume  to  assign  any 
living  man  his  rank  or  station.  But  I  should  be  false 
to  my  own  grateful  sense  of  beauty  in  the  work  of  this 
poet  if  I  did  not  at  all  times  recognize  his  constancy  to 
an  ideal  which  his  name  stands  for.  He  is  known  in 
several  kinds,  but  to  my  thinking  he  is  best  in  a  certain 
nobler  kind  of  poetry;  a  serious  sort  in  which  the 
thought  holds  him  above  the  scrupulosities  of  the  art  he 
loves  and  honors  so  much.  Sometimes  the  file  slips  in 
his  hold,  as  the  file  must  and  will ;  it  is  but  an  instru 
ment  at  the  best ;  but  there  is  no  mistouch  in  the  hand 
that  lays  itself  upon  the  reader's  heart  with  the  pulse 
of  the  poet's  heart  quick  and  true  in  it.  There  are  son 
nets  of  his,  grave,  and  simple,  and  lofty,  which  I  think 
of  with  the  glow  and  thrill  possible  only  from  very 
beautiful  poetry,  and  which  impart  such  an  emotion 
as  we  can  feel  only 

"  When  a  great  thought  strikes  along  the  brain 
And  flushes  all  the  cheek." 

When  I  had  the  fortune  to  meet  him  first,  I  suppose 
that  in  the  employ  of  the  kindly  house  we  were  both  so 

120 


UTERAEY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

eager  to  serve,  our  dignities  were  about  the  same;  for 
if  the  Atlantic  Monthly  was  a  somewhat  prouder  affair 
than  an  eclectic  weekly  like  Every  Saturday,  he  was 
supreme  in  his  place,  and  I  was  subordinate  in  mine. 
The  house  was  careful,  in  the  attitude  of  its  senior 
partner,  not  to  distinguish  between  us,  and  we  were 
not  slow  to  perceive  the  tact  used  in  managing  us ;  we 
had  our  own  joke  of  it;  we  compared  notes  to  find 
whether  we  were  equally  used  in  this  thing  or  that; 
and  we  promptly  shared  the  fun  of  our  discovery  with 
Fields  himself. 

We  had  another  impartial  friend  (no  less  a  friend  of 
joy  in  the  life  which  seems  to  have  been  pretty  nearly 
all  joy,  as  I  look  back  upon  it)  in  the  partner  who  be 
came  afterwards  the  head  of  the  house,  and  who  fore 
cast  in  his  bold  enterprises  the  change  from  a  ^few  Eng 
land  to  an  American  literary  situation.  In  the  end 
James  R.  Osgood  failed,  though  all  his  enterprises  suc 
ceeded.  The  anomaly  is  sad,  but  it  is  not  infrequent. 
They  were  greater  than  his  powers  and  his  means,  and 
before  they  could  reach  their  full  fruition,  they  had 
to  be  enlarged  to  men  of  longer  purse  and  longer  pa 
tience.  He  was  singularly  fitted  both  by  instinct  and 
by  education  to  become  a  great  publisher ;  and  he  early 
perceived  that  if  a  leading  American  house  were  to  con 
tinue  at  Boston,  it  must  be  hospitable  to  the  talents  of 
the  whole  country.  He  founded  his  future  upon  those 
generous  lines ;  but  he  wanted  the  qualities  as  well  as  the 
resources  for  rearing  the  superstructure.  Changes  be 
gan  to  follow  each  other  rapidly  after  he  came  into 
control  of  the  house.  Misfortune  reduced  the  size  and 
number  of  its  periodicals.  The  Young  Folks  was  sold 
outright,  and  the  North  American  Review  (long  before 
Air  Eice  bought  it  and  carried  it  to  Xew  York)  was 
cut  down  one-half,  so  that  Aldrich  said,  It  looked  as  if 

121 


LITEEARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Destiny  had  sat  upon  it.  His  own  periodical,  Every 
Saturday,  was  first  enlarged  to  a  stately  quarto  and  il 
lustrated;  and  then,  under  stress  of  the  calamities  fol 
lowing  the  great  Boston  fire,  it  collapsed  to  its  former 
size.  Then  both  the  Atlantic  Monthly  and  Every  Sat 
urday  were  sold  away  from  their  old  ownership,  and 
Every  Saturday  was  suppressed  altogether,  and  we  two 
ceased  to  be  of  the  same  employ.  There  was  some  sort 
of  evening  rite  (more  funereal  than  festive)  the  day 
after  they  were  sold,  and  we  followed  Osgood  away 
from  it,  under  the  lamps.  We  all  knew  that  it  was 
his  necessity  that  had  caused  him  to  part  with  the  peri 
odicals;  but  he  professed  that  it  was  his  pleasure,  and 
he  said  he  had  not  felt  so  light-hearted  since  he  was  a 
boy.  We  asked  him,  How  could  he  feel  gay  when  he 
was  no  longer  paying  us  our  salaries,  and  how  could  he 
justify  it  to  his  conscience?  He  liked  our  mocking, 
and  limped  away  from  us  with  a  rheumatic  easing  of 
his  weight  from  one  foot  to  another:  a  figure  pathetic 
now  that  it  has  gone  the  way  to  dusty  death,  and  dear 
to  memory  through  benefactions  unalloyed  by  one  un- 
kindness. 

IV 

But  when  I  came  to  Boston  early  in  1866,  the  'At 
lantic  Monthly  and  Harper's  then  divided  our  maga 
zine  world  between  them ;  the  North  American  Review, 
in  the  control  of  Lowell  and  Professor  Norton,  had 
entered  upon  a  new  life ;  Every  Saturday  was  an  in 
stant  success  in  the  charge  of  Mr.  Aldrich,  who  was  by 
taste  and  training  one  of  the  best  editors;  and  Our 
Young  Folks  had  the  field  of  juvenile  periodical  litera 
ture  to  itself. 

It  was  under  the  direction  of  Miss  Lucy  Larcom  and 
of  Mr.  J.  T.  Trowbridge,  who  had  come  from  western 

122 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

York,  where  he  was  born,  and  must  be  noted  as 
one  of  the  first  returners  from  the  setting  to  the  rising 
sun.  He  naturalized  himself  in  Boston  in  his  later 
boyhood,  and  he  still  breathes  Boston  air,  where  he 
dwells  in  the  street  called  Pleasant,  on  the  shore  of  Spy 
Pond,  at  Arlington,  and  still  weaves  the  magic  web  of 
his  satisfying  stories  for  boys.  He  merges  in  their  popu 
larity  the  fame  of  a  poet  which  I  do  not  think  will  al 
ways  suffer  that  eclipse,  for  his  poems  show  him  to 
have  looked  deeply  into  the  heart  of  common  humanity 
with  a  true  and  tender  sense  of  it. 

Miss  Larcom  scarcely  seemed  to  change  from  date  to 
date  in  the  generation  that  elapsed  between  the  time  I 
first  saw  her  and  the  time  I  saw  her  last,  a  year  or  two 
before  her  death.  A  goodness  looked  out  of  her  comely 
face,  which  made  me  think  of  the  Madonna's  in 
Titian's  "  Assumption,"  and  her  whole  aspect  express 
ed  a  mild  and  friendly  spirit  which  I  find  it  hard  to  put 
in  words.  She  was  never  of  the  fine  world  of  litera 
ture  ;  she  dwelt  where  she  was  born,  in  that  unfashion 
able  Beverly  which  is  not  Beverly  Farms,  and  was  of 
a  simple,  sea-faring,  God-fearing  race,  as  she  has  told 
in  one  of  the  loveliest  autobiographies  I  know,  A  New 
England  Girlhood.  She  was-the  author  of  many  poems, 
whose  number  she  constantly  enlarged,  but  she  was 
chiefly,  and  will  be  most  lastingly,  famed  for  the  one 
poem,  Hannah  Binding  Shoes,  which  years  before 
my  days  in  Boston  had  made  her  so  widely  knowm  Sho 
never  again  struck  so  deep  or  so  true  a  note;  but  if  one 
has  lodged  such  a  note  in  the  ear  of  time,  it  is  enough ; 
and  if  we  are  to  speak  of  eternity,  one  might  very  well 
hold  up  one's  head  in  the  fields  of  asphodel,  if  one  could 
say  to  the  great  others  there,  «  I  wrote  Hannah  Binding 
Shoes/'  Her  poem  is  very,  very  sad,  as  all  who  have 
read  it  will  remember;  but  Miss  Larcom  herself  was 

123 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

above  everything  cheerful,  and  she  had  a  laugh  of  mel 
low  richness  which  willingly  made  itself  heard.  She 
was  not  only  of  true  New  England  stock,  and  a  Boston 
author  by  right  of  race,  but  she  came  up  to  that  city 
every  winter  from  her  native  town. 

By  the  same  right  and  on  the  same  terms,  another 
New  England  poetess,  whom  I  met  those  first  days  in 
Boston,  was  a  Boston  author.  When  I  saw  Celia  Thax- 
ter  she  was  just  beginning  to  make  her  effect  with  those 
poems  and  sketches  which  the  sea  sings  and  flashes 
through  as  it  sings  and  flashes  around  the  Isles  of 
Shoals,  her  summer  home,  where  her  girlhood  had  been 
passed  in  a  freedom  as  wild  as  the  curlew's.  She  was 
a  most  beautiful  creature,  still  very  young,  with  a 
slender  figure,  and  an  exquisite  perfection  of  feature; 
she  was  in  presence  what  her  work  was:  fine,  frank, 
finished.  I  do  not  know  whether  other  witnesses  of  our 
literary  history  feel  that  the  public  has  failed  to  keep 
her  as  fully  in  mind  as  her  work  merited ;  but  I  do  not 
think  there  can  be  any  doubt  but  our  literature  would 
be  sensibly  the  poorer  without  her  work.  It  is  inter 
esting  to  remember  how  closely  she  kept  to  her  native 
field,  and  it  is  wonderful  to  consider  how  richly  she 
made  those  sea-beaten  rocks  to  blossom.  Something 
strangely  full  and  bright  came  to  her  verse  from  the 
mystical  environment  of  the  ocean,  like  the  luxury  of 
leaf  and  tint  that  it  gave  the  narrower  flower-plots  of  her 
native  isles.  Her  gift,  indeed,  could  not  satisfy  itself 
with  the  terms  of  one  art  alone,  however  varied,  and 
she  learned  to  express  in  color  the  thoughts  and  feel 
ings  impatient  of  the  pallor  of  words. 

She  remains  in  my  memories  of  that  far  Boston 
a  distinct  and  vivid  personality;  as  the  authoress  of 
Amber  Gods,  and  In  a  Cellar,  and  Circum 
stance,  and  those  other  wild  romantic  tales,  remains 

124: 


the  gentle  and  somewhat  evanescent  presence  I  found 
her.     Miss  Prescott  was  now  Mrs.  Spofford,  and  her 
husband  was  a  rising  young  politician  of  the  day.     It 
was  his  duties  as  member  of  the  General  Court  that 
had  brought  them  up  from  ISTewburyport  to  Boston  for 
that  first  winter;  and  I  remember  that  the  evening 
when  we  met  he  was  talking  of  their  some  time  going 
to  Italy  that  she  might  study  for  imaginative  litera 
ture  certain  Italian  cities  he  named.    I  have  long  since 
ceased  to  own  those  cities,  but  at  the  moment  I  felt  a 
pang  of  expropriation  which  I  concealed  as  well  as  I 
could;   and  now  I  heartily  wish  she  could  have  ful 
filled  that  purpose  if  it  was  a  purpose,  or  realized 
that    dream    if    it    was    only    a    dream.      Perhaps, 
however,     that    sumptuous     and    glowing    fancy    of 
hers,  which  had  taken  the  fancy  of  the  young  readers 
of  that  day,  needed  the  cold  New  England  background 
to  bring  out  all  its  intensities  of  tint,  all  its  splendors 
of  light.     Its  effects  were  such  as  could  not  last,  or 
could  not  be  farther  evolved ;  they  were  the  expression 
of  youth  musing  away  from  its  environment  and  smit 
ten  with  the  glories  of  a  world  afar  and  beyond,  the 
great  world,  the  fine  world,  the  impurpled  world  of 
romantic  motives  and  passions.     But  for  what  they 
were,  I  can  never  think  them  other  than  what  they  ap 
peared:  the  emanations  of  a  rarely  gifted  and  singu 
larly  poetic  mind.     I  feel  better  than  I  can  say  how 
necessarily  they  were  the  emanations  of  a  New  Eng 
land  mind,  and  how  to  the  subtler  sense  they  must  im 
part  the  pathos  of  revolt  from  the  colorless  rigidities 
which  are  the  long  result  of  puritanisrn  in  the  physiog 
nomy  of  New  England  life. 

Their  author  afterwards  gave  herself  to  the  i 
study  of  this  life  in  many  tales  and  sketches  which 
showed  an  increasing  mastery;  but  they  could  not  have 

125 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

the  flush,  the  surprise,  the  delight  of  a  young  talent 
trying  itself  in  a  kind  native  and,  so  far  as  I  know, 
peculiar  to  it.  From  time  to  time  I  still  come  upon  a 
poem  of  hers  which  recalls  that  earlier  strain  of  music, 
of  color,  and  I  am  content  to  trust  it  for  my  abiding 
faith  in  the  charm  of  things  I  have  not  read  for  thirty 
years. 

V 

I  speak  of  this  one  and  that,  as  it  happens,  and  with 
no  thought  of  giving  a  complete  prospect  of  literary 
Boston  thirty  years  ago.  I  am  aware  that  it  will  seem 
sparsely  peopled  in  the  effect  I  impart,  and  I  would 
have  the  reader  always  keep  in  mind  the  great  fames 
at  Cambridge  and  at  Concord,  which  formed  so  large 
a  part  of  the  celebrity  of  Boston.  I  would  also  like 
him  to  think  of  it  as  still  a  great  town,  merely,  where 
every  one  knew  every  one  else,  and  whose  metropoli 
tan  liberation  from  neighborhood  was  just  begun. 

Most  distinctly  of  that  yet  uncitified  Boston  was  the 
critic  Edwin  P.  Whipple,  whose  sympathies  were  in 
definitely  wider  than  his  traditions.  He  was  a  most 
generous  lover  of  all  that  was  excellent  in  literature; 
and  though  I  suppose  we  should  call  him  an  old- 
fashioned  critic  now,  I  suspect  it  would  be  with  no  dis 
tinct  sense  of  what  is  newer  fashioned.  He  was  cer 
tainly  as  friendly  to  what  promised  well  in  the  young 
er  men  as  he  was  to  what  was  done  well  in  their 
ciders;  and  there  was  no  one  writing  in  his  day 
whose  virtues  failed  of  his  recognition,  though  it  might 
happen  that  his  foibles  would  escape  Whipple's  cen 
sure.  He  wrote  strenuously  and  of  course  conscien 
tiously;  his  point  of  view  was  solely  and  always  that 
which  enabled  him  best  to  discern  qualities.  I  doubt 
if  he  had  any  theory  of  criticism  except  to  find  out 

126 


what  was  good  in  an  author  and  praise  it;  and  he 
rather  blamed  what  was  ethically  bad  than  what  was 
aesthetically  bad.  In  this  he  was  strictly  of  New  Eng 
land,  and  he  was  of  New  England  in  a  certain  general 
intelligence,  which  constantly  grew  with  an  interrog 
ative  habit  of  mind. 

He  liked  to  talk  to  you  of  what  he  had  found  charac 
teristic  in  your  work,  to  analyze  you  to  yourself;  and 
the  very  modesty  of  the  man,  which  made  such  a  study 
impersonal  as  far  as  he  was  concerned,  sometimes 
rendered  him  insensible  to  the  sufferings  of  his  sub 
ject.  He  had  a  keen  perception  of  humor  in  others, 
but  he  had  very  little  humor ;  he  had  a  love  of  the  beau 
tiful  in  literature  which  was  perhaps  sometimes  great 
er  than  his  sense  of  it. 

I  write  from  a  cursory  acquaintance  with  his  work, 
not  recently  renewed.  Of  the  presence  of  the  man  I 
have  a  vivider  remembrance:  a  slight,  short,  ecclesi- 
asticized  figure  in  black;  with  a  white  neckcloth  and  a 
silk  hat  of  strict  decorum,  and  between  the  two  a 
square  face  with  square  features,  intensified  in  their 
regard  by  a  pair  of  very  large  glasses,  and  the  promi 
nent,  myopic  eyes  staring  through  them.  He  was  a 
type  of  out-dated  New  England  scholarship  in  these 
aspects,  but  in  the  hospitable  qualities  of  his  mind  and 
heart,  the  sort  of  man  to  be  kept  fondly  in  the  memory 
of  all  who  ever  knew  him. 

Out  of  the  vague  of  that  far-off  time  another  face 
and  figure,  as  essentially  New  England  as  this,  and  yet 
so  different,  relieve  themselves.  Charles  F.  Browne, 
whose  drollery  wafted  his  pseudonym  as  far  as  the 
English  speech  could  carry  laughter,  was  a  Western 
ized  Yankee.  He  added  an  Ohio  way  of  talking  to 
the  Maine  way  of  thinking,  and  he  so  became  a  literary 
product  of  a  rarer  and  stranger  sort  than  our  literature 

127 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

had  otherwise  known.  He  had  gone  from  Cleveland  to 
London,  with  intervals  of  New  York  and  the  lecture 
platform,  four  or  five  years  before  I  saw  him  in  Bos 
ton,  shortly  after  I  went  there.  We  had  met  in  Ohio, 
and  he  had  personally  explained  to  me  the  ducatless 
well-meaning  of  Vanity  Fair  in  New  York ;  but  many 
men  had  since  shaken  the  weary  hand  of  Artemus 
Ward  when  I  grasped  it  one  day  in  front  of  the  Tre- 
mont  Temple.  He  did  not  recognize  me,  but  he  gave 
me  at  once  a  greeting  of  great  impersonal  cordiality, 
with  "  How  do  you  do  ?  When  did  you  come  ?"  and 
other  questions  that  had  no  concern  in  them,  till  I  be 
gan  to  dawn  upon  him  through  a  cloud  of  other  half- 
remembered  faces.  Then  he  seized  my  hand  and 
wrung  it  all  over  again,  and  repeated  his  friendly 
demands  with  an  intonation  that  was  now  "  Why,  how 
are  you, — how  are  you?"  for  me  alone.  It  was  a  bit 
of  comedy,  which  had  the  fit  pathetic  relief  of  his  im 
pending  doom:  this  was  already  stamped  upon  his 
wasted  face,  and  his  gay  eyes  had  the  death-look.  His 
large,  loose  mouth  was  drawn,  for  all  its  laughter  at 
the  fact  which  he  owned ;  his  profile,  which  burlesqued 
an  eagle's,  was  the  profile  of  a  drooping  eagle ;  his  lank 
length  of  limb  trembled  away  with  him  when  we  part 
ed.  I  did  not  see  him  again ;  I  scarcely  heard  of  him 
till  I  heard  of  his  death,  and  this  sad  image  remains 
with  me  of  the  humorist  who  first  gave  the  world  a 
taste  of  the  humor  which  characterizes  the  whole 
American  people. 

VI 

I  was  meeting  all  kinds  of  distinguished  persons,  in 
my  relation  to  the  magazine,  and  early  that  winter 
I  met  one  who  remains  in  my  mind  above  all  others 
a  person  of  distinction.  He  was  scarcely  a  celebrity, 

128 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

but  he  embodied  certain  social  traits  which  were  so 
characteristic  of  literary  Boston  that  it  could  not  be 
approached  without  their  recognition.  The  Muses 
have  often  been  acknowledged  to  be  very  nice  young 
persons,  but  in  Boston  they  were  really  ladies ;  in  Bos 
ton  literature  was  of  good  family  and  good  society  in 
a  measure  it  has  never  been  elsewhere.  It  might  be 
said  even  that  reform  was  of  good  family  in  Boston; 
and  literature  and  reform  equally  shared  the  regard  of 
Edmund  Qurncy,  whose  race  was  one  of  the  most  aris 
tocratic  in  !New  England.  I  had  known  him  by  his 
novel  of  Wensley  (it  came  so  near  being  a  first-rate 
novel),  and  by  his  Life  of  Josiah  Quincy,  then  a  new 
book,  but  still  better  by  his  Boston  letters  to  the  New 
York  Tribune.  These  dealt  frankly,  in  the  old  anti- 
slavery  days  between  1850  and  1860,  with  other  per 
sons  of  distinction  in  Boston,  who  did  not  see  the  right 
so  clearly  as  Quincy  did,  or  who  at  least  let  their  in 
terests  darken  them  to  the  ugliness  of  slavery.  Their 
fault  was  all  the  more  comical  because  it  was  the  error 
of  men  otherwise  so  correct,  of  characters  so  stainless, 
of  natures  so  upright ;  and  the  Quincy  letters  got  out 
of  it  all  the  fun  there  was  in  it.  Quincy  himself  affect 
ed  me  as  the  finest  patrician  type  I  had  ever  met.  He 
was  charmingly  handsome,  with  a  nose  of  most  fit 
aquilinity,  smooth-shaven  lips,  "educated  whiskers," 
and  perfect  glasses;  his  manner  was  beautiful,  his 
voice  delightful,  when  at  our  first  meeting  he  made  me 
his  reproaches  in  terms  of  lovely  kindness  for  having 
used  in  my  Venetian  Life  the  Briticism  directly  i 

as  soon  as.  , 

Lowell  once  told  me  that  Quincy  had  never  had  any 
calling  or  profession,  because  when  he  found  himself 
in  the  enjoyment  of  a  moderate  income  on  leaving  col 
We,  he  decided  to  be  simply  a  gentleman.  He  was  too 

129 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

much  of  a  man  to  be  merely  that,  and  he  was  an  aboli 
tionist,  a  journalist,  and  for  conscience'  sake  a  satirist. 
Of  that  political  mood  of  society  which  he  satirized  was 
an  eminent  man  whom  it  was  also  my  good  fortune  to 
meet  in  my  early  days  in  Boston;  and  if  his  great 
sweetness  and  kindness  had  not  instantly  won  my  lik 
ing,  I  should  still  have  been  glad  of  the  glimpse  of  the 
older  and  statelier  Boston  which  my  slight  acquaintance 
with  George  Ticknor  gave  me.  The  historian  of  Span 
ish  literature,  the  friend  and  biographer  of  Prescott, 
and  a  leading  figure  of  the  intellectual  society  of  an 
epoch  already  closed,  dwelt  in  the  fine  old  square  brick 
mansion  which  yet  stands  at  the  corner  of  Park  Street 
and  Beacon,  though  sunk  now  to  a  variety  of  business 
uses,  and  lamentably  changed  in  aspect.  The  interior 
was  noble,  and  there  was  an  air  of  scholarly  quiet  and 
of  lettered  elegance  in  the  library,  where  the  host  re 
ceived  his  guests,  which  seemed  to  pervade  the  whole 
house,  and  which  made  its  appeal  to  the  imagination  of 
one  of  them  most  potently.  It  seemed  to  me  that  to 
be  master  of  such  circumstance  and  keeping  would  be 
enough  of  life  in  a  certain  way;  and  it  all  lingers  in 
my  memory  yet,  as  if  it  were  one  with  the  gentle  cour 
tesy  which  welcomed  me. 

Among  my  fellow-guests  one  night  was  George  S. 
Hillard,  now  a  faded  reputation,  and  even  then  a  life 
defeated  of  the  high  expectation  of  its  youth.  I  do  not 
know  whether  his  Six  Months  in  Italy  still  keeps  itself 
in  print ;  but  it  was  a  book  once  very  well  known ;  and 
he  was  perhaps  the  more  gracious  to  me,  as  our  host 
was,  because  of  our  common  Italian  background.  He 
was  of  the  old  Silver-gray  Whig  society  too,  and  I  sup 
pose  that  order  of  things  imparted  its  tone  to  what  I 
felt  and  saw  in  that  place.  The  civil  war  had  come 
and  gone,  and  that  order  accepted  the  result  if  not  with 

130 


LITEKARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

faith,  then  with  patience.  There  were  two  young  Eng 
lish  noblemen  there  that  night,  who  had  been  travelling 
in  the  South,  and  whose  stories  of  the  wretched  condi 
tions  they  had  seen  moved  our  host  to  some  open  mis 
giving.  But  the  Englishmen  had  no  question  j  in  spito 
of  all,  they  defended  the  accomplished  fact,  and  when 
I  ventured  to  say  that  now  at  least  there  could  be  a 
hope  of  better  things,  while  the  old  order  was  only  the 
perpetuation  of  despair,  he  mildly  assented,  with  a 
gesture  of  the  hand  that  waived  the  point,  and  a  deep 
ly  sighed,  "Perhaps;  perhaps." 

He  was  a  presence  of  great  dignity,  which  seemed  to 
recall  the  past  with  a  steadfast  allegiance,  and  yet  to 
relax  itself  towards  the  present  in  the  wisdom  of  the  ac 
cumulated  years.  His  whole  life  had  been  passed  in 
devotion  to  polite  literature  and  in  the  society  of  the 
polite  world ;  and  he  was  a  type  of  scholar  such  as  only 
the  circumstances  of  Boston  could  form.  Those  cir 
cumstances  could  alone  form  such  another  type 
as  Quincy;  and  I  wish  I  could  have  felt  then  as  I  do 
now  the  advantage  of  meeting  them  so  contemporane 
ously. 

VII 

The  historian  of  Spanish  literature  was  an  old  man 
nearer  eighty  than  seventy  when  I  saw  him,  and  I  re 
call  of  him  personally  his  dark  tint,  and  the  scholarly 
refinement,  of  his  clean-shaven  face,  which  seemed  to  me 
rather  English  than  American  in  character.  He  was 

o 

quite  exterior  to  the  Atlantic  group  of  writers,  and  had 
no  interest  in  me  as  one  of  it.  Literary  Boston  of  that 
day  was  not  a  solidarity,  as  I  soon  perceived;  and  I 
understood  that  it  was  only  in  my  quality  of  stranger 
that  I  saw  the  different  phases  of  it.  I  should  not  be 
just  to  a  vivid  phase  if  I  failed  to  speak  of  Mrs.  Julia 

131 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Ward  Howe  and  the  impulse  of  reform  which  she  per 
sonified.  I  did  not  sympathize  with  this  then  so  much 
as  I  do  now,  but  I  could  appreciate  it  on  the  intellectual 
side.  Once,  many  years  later,  I  heard  Mrs.  Howe 
speak  in  public,  and  it  seemed  to  mo  that  she  made  one 
of  the  best  speeches  I  had  ever  heard.  It  gave  me  for 
the  first  time  a  notion  of  what  women  might  do  in  that 
sort  if  they  entered  public  life;  but  when  we  met  in 
those  earlier  days  I  was  interested  in  her  as  perhaps 
our  chief  poetess.  I  believe  she  did  not  care  much  to 
speak  of  literature;  she  was  alert  for  other  meanings 
in  life,  and  I  remember  how  she  once  brought  to  book 
a  youthful  matron  who  had  perhaps  unduly  lamented 
the  hardships  of  housekeeping,  with  the  sharp  demand, 
"  Child,  where  is  your  religion?"  After  the  many  years 
of  an  acquaintance  which  had  not  nearly  so  many  meet 
ings  as  years,  it  was  pleasant  to  find  her,  at  the  latest, 
as  strenuous  as  ever  for  the  faith  of  works,  and  as  eager 
to  aid  Stepiiiak  as  John  Brown.  In  her  beautiful  old 
age  she  survives  a  certain  literary  impulse  of  Boston, 
but  a  still  higher  impulse  of  Boston  she  will  not  sur 
vive,  for  that  will  last  while  the  city  endures. 

VIII 

The  Cambridge  men  were  curiously  apart  from  others 
that  formed  the  great  New  England  group,  and  with 
whom  in  my  earlier  ignorance  I  had  always  fancied 
them  mingling.  Now  and  then  I  met  Doctor  Holmes 
at  Longfellow's  table,  but  not  oftener  than  now  and 
then,  and  I  never  saw  Emerson  in  Cambridge  at  all 
except  at  Longfellow's  funeral.  In  my  first  years  on 
the  Atlantic  I  sometimes  saw  him,  when  he  would  ad 
dress  me  some  grave,  rather  retrorsive  civilities,  after 
I  had  been  newly  introduced  to  him,  as  I  had  always 

132 


to  be  on  these  occasions.  I  formed  the  belief  that  he 
did  not  care  for  me,  either  in  my  being  or  doing,  and  I 
am  far  from  blaming  him  for  that :  on  such  points  there 
might  easily  be  two  opinions,  and  I  was  myself  often  of 
the  mind  I  imagined  in  him. 

If  Emerson  forgot  me,  it  was  perhaps  because  I  was 
not  of  those  qualities  of  things  which  even  then,  it  was 
said,  he  could  remember  so  much  better  than  things 
themselves.  In  his  later  years  I  sometimes  saw  him 
in  the  Boston  streets  with  his  beautiful  face  dreamily 
set,  as  he  moved  like  one  to  whose  vision 

"  Heaven  opens  inward,  chasms  yawn, 
Vast  images  in  glimmering  dawn, 
Half  shown,  are  broken  and  withdrawn." 

It  is  known  how  before  the  end  the  eclipse  became 
total  and  from  moment  to  moment  the  record  inscribed 
upon  his  mind  was  erased.  Some  years  before  he  died 
I  sat  between  him  and  Mrs.  Eose  Terry  Cooke,  at  an 
Atlantic  Breakfast  where  it  was  part  of  my  editorial 
function  to  preside.  When  he  was  not  asking  me  who 
she  was,  I  could  hear  him  asking  her  who  I  was.  His 
great  soul  worked  so  independently  of  memory  as  we  con 
ceive  it  and  so  powerfully  and  essentially,  that  one  could 
not  help  wondering  if,  after  all,  our  personal  continu 
ity  our  identity  hereafter,  was  necessarily  trammelc 
up  with  our  enduring  knowledge  of  what  happens  here 
His  remembrance  absolutely  ceased  with  an  event,  and 
yet  his  character,  his  personality,  his  identity  f 

sistcci  •       i 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  things  that  we  prmte 
for  Emerson  after  his  memory  began  to  fail  so  utt, 
Were  the  work  of  earlier  years  or  not,  but  I  kno, 
thcv  were  of  his  best.    There  were  certain  poems 
could  not  have  been  more  elcctly,  more  exquisitely  his, 

133 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

or  fashioned  with  a  keener  and  juster  self-criticism. 
His  vision  transcended  his  time  so  far  that  some  who 
have  tired  themselves  out  in  trying  to  catch  up  with 
him  have  now  begun  to  say  that  he  was  no  seer  at  all ; 
but  I  doubt  if  these  form  the  last  court  of  appeal  in 
his  case.  In  manner,  he  was  very  gentle,  like  all  those 
great  New  England  men,  but  he  was  cold,  like  many 
of  them,  to  the  new-comer,  or  to  the  old-comer  who 
came  newly.  As  I  have  elsewhere  recorded,  I  once 
heard  him  speak  critically  of  Hawthorne,  and  once  he 
expressed  his  surprise  at  the  late  flowering  brilliancy 
of  Holmes's  gift  in  the  Autocrat  papers  after  all 
his  friends  supposed  it  had  borne  its  best  fruit.  But  I 
recall  no  mention  of  Longfellow,  or  Lowell,  or  Whittier 
from  him.  At  a  dinner  where  the  talk  glanced  upon 
Walt  Whitman  he  turned  to  me  as  perhaps  representing 
the  interest  posterity  might  take  in  the  matter,  and  re 
ferred  to  Whitman's  public  use  of  his  privately  written 
praise  as  something  altogether  unexpected.  He  did  not 
disown  it  or  withdraw  it,  but  seemed  to  feel  (not  in 
dignantly)  that  there  had  been  an  abuse  of  it. 

IX 

The  first  time  I  saw  Whittier  was  in  Fields's  room 
at  the  publishing  office,  where  I  had  come  upon  some 
editorial  errand  to  my  chief.  He  introduced  me  to 
the  poet:  a  tall,  spare  figure  in  black  of  Quaker  cut, 
with  a  keen,  clean-shaven  face,  black  hair,  and  vivid 
black  eyes.  It  was  just  after  his  poem,  Snow  Bound, 
had  made  its  great  success,  in  the  modest  fashion  of 
those  days,  and  had  sold  not  two  hundred  thousand  but 
twenty  thousand,  and  I  tried  to  make  him  my  compli 
ment.  I  contrived  to  say  that  I  could  not  tell  him  how 
much  I  liked  it;  and  he  received  the  inadequate  ex- 

134 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

pression  of  my  feeling  with  doubtless  as  much  effusion 
as  he  would  have  met  something  more  explicit  and 
abundant.  If  he  had  judged  fit  to  take  my  contract  off 
my  hands  in  any  way,  I  think  he  would  have  been  less 
able  to  do  so  than  any  of  his  New  England  contempo 
raries.  In  him,  as  I  have  suggested,  the  Quaker  calm 
was  bound  by  the  frosty  Puritanic  air,  and  he  was  doubly 
cold  to  the  touch  of  the  stranger,  though  he  would  thaw 
out  to  old  friends,  and  sparkle  in  laugh  and  joke.  I  my 
self  never  got  so  far  with  him  as  to  experience  this  geni 
ality,  though  afterwards  we  became  such  friends  as  an 
old  man  and  a  young  man  could  be  who  rarely  met. 
Our  better  acquaintance  began  with  some  talk,  at  a  sec 
ond  meeting,  about  Bayard  Taylor's  Story  of  Kennett, 
which  had  then  lately  appeared,  and  which  he  praised 
for  its  fidelity  to  Quaker  character  in  its  less  amiable 
aspects.  N"o  doubt  I  had  made  much  of  my  own 
Quaker  descent  (which  I  felt  was  one  of  the  few  things 
I  had  to  be  proud  of),  and  he  therefore  spoke  the  more 
frankly  of  those  traits  of  brutality  into  which  the  primi 
tive  sincerity  of  the  sect  sometimes  degenerated.  Ho 
thought  the  habit  of  plain-speaking  had  to  be  jealously 
guarded  to  keep  it  from  becoming  rude-speaking,  and 
he  matched  with  stories  of  his  own  some  things  I  had 
heard  my  father  tell  of  Friends  in  the  backwoods  who' 
were  Foes  to  good  manners. 

Whittier  was  one  of  the  most  generous  of  men  tow 
ards  the  work  of  others,  especially  the  work  of  a  new 
man,  and  if  I  did  anything  that  he  liked,  I  could  count 
upon  him  for  cordial  recognition.  In  the  quiet  of  his 
country  home  at  Danvers  he  apparently  read  all  the 
magazines,  and  kept  himself  fully  abreast  of  the  liter 
ary  movement,  but  I  doubt  if  he  so  fully  appreciated 
the  importance  of  the  social  movement.  Like  some 
others  of  the  great  anti-slavery  men,  he  seemed  to  irnag- 

135 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

ine  that  mankind  had  won  itself  a  clear  field  by  destroy 
ing  chattel  slavery,  and  ho  had  no  sympathy  with  those 
who  think  that  the  man  who  may  any  moment  be  out  of 
work  is  industrially  a  slave.  This  is  not  strange;  so 
few  men  last  over  from  one  reform  to  another  that  the 
wonder  is  that  any  should,  not  that  one  should  not. 
Whittier  was  prophet  for  one  great  need  of  the  divine  to 
man,  and  he  spoke  his  message  with  a  fervor  that  at  times 
was  like  the  trembling  of  a  flame,  or  the  quivering  of 
midsummer  sunshine.  It  was  hard  to  associate  with  the 
man  as  one  saw  him,  still,  shy,  stiff,  the  passion  of  his 
verse.  This  imbued  not  only  his  anti-slavery  utter 
ances,  but  equally  his  ballads  of  the  old  witch  and 
Quaker  persecution,  and  flashed  a  far  light  into  the 
dimness  where  his  interrogations  of  Mystery  pierced. 
Whatever  doubt  there  can  be  of  the  fate  of  other  New 
England  poets  in  the  great  and  final  account,  it  seems 
to  me  that  certain  of  these  pieces  make  his  place  secure. 
There  is  great  inequality  in  his  work,  and  I  felt  this 
so  strongly  that  when  I  came  to  have  full  charge  of  the 
Magazine,  I  ventured  once  to  distinguish.  He  sent  me 
a  poem,  and  I  had  the  temerity  to  return  it,  and  bog  him 
for  something  else.  He  magnanimously  refrained  from 
all  show  of  offence,  and  after  a  while,  when  he  had  print 
ed  the  poem  elsewhere,  he  gave  me  another.  By  this  time, 
I  perceived  that  I  had  been  wrong,  not  as  to  the  poem 
returned,  but  as  to  my  function  regarding  him  and  such 
as  he.  I  had  made  my  reflections,  and  never  again  did 
I  venture  to  pass  upon  what  contributors  of  his  quality 
sent  me.  I  took  it  and  printed  it,  and  praised  the  gods ; 
,and  even  now  I  think  that  with  such  men  it  was  not 
my  duty  to  play  the  censor  in  the  periodical  which  they 
had  made  what  it  was.  They  had  set  it  in  authority 
over  American  literature,  and  it  was  not  for  me  to  put 
myself  in  authority  over  them.  Their  fame  was  in 

136 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

their  own  keeping,  and  it  was  not  my  part  to  guard  it 
against  them. 

After  that  experience  I  not  only  practised  an  eager 
acquiescence  in  their  wish  to  reach  the  public  through 
the  Atlantic,  but  I  used  all  the  delicacy  I  was  master  of 
in  bowing  the  way  to  them.  Sometimes  my  utmost  did 
not  avail,  or  more  strictly  speaking  it  did  not  avail  in 
one  instance  with  Emerson.  He  had  given  me  upon 
much  entreaty  a  poem  which  was  one  of  his  greatest 
and  best,  but  the  proof-reader  found  a  nominative 
at  odds  with  its  verb.  We  had  some  trouble  in  recon 
ciling  them,  and  some  other  delays,  and  meanwhile 
Doctor  Holmes  offered  me  a  poem  for  the  same  num 
ber.  I  now  doubted  whether  I  should  get  Emerson's 
poem  back  in  time  for  it,  but  unluckily  the  proof  did 
come  back  in  time,  and  then  I  had  to  choose  between 
my  poets,  or  acquaint  them  with  the  state  of  the  case, 
and  let  them  choose  \vhat  I  should  do.  I  really  felt 
that  Doctor  Holmes  had  the  right  to  precedence,  since 
Emerson  had  withheld  his  proof  so  long  that  I  could  not 
count  upon  it;  but  I  wrote  to  Emerson,  and  asked  (as 
nearly  as  I  can  remember)  whether  he  would  consent 
to  let  me  put  his  poem  over  to  the  next  number,  or 
would  prefer  to  have  it  appear  in  the  same  number 
with  Doctor  Holmes's ;  the  subjects  were  cognate,  and  I 
had  my  misgivings.  He  wrote  me  back  to  "  return  the 
proofs  and  break  up  the  forms."  I  could  not  go  to  this 
iconoclastic  extreme  with  the  electrotypes  of  the  maga 
zine,  but  I  could  return  the  proofs.  I  did  so,  feeling 
that  I  had  done  my  possible,  and  silently  grieving  that 
there  could  be  such  ire  in  heavenly  minds. 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 


Emerson,  as  I  say,  I  had  once  met  in  Cambridge, 
but  Whittier  never;  and  I  have  a  feeling  that  poet  as 
Cambridge  felt  him  to  be,  she  had  her  reservations  con 
cerning  him.  I  cannot  put  these  into  words  which 
would  not  oversay  them,  but  they  were  akin  to  those 
she  might  have  refined  upon  in  regard  to  Mrs.  Stowe. 
Neither  of  these  great  writers  would  have  appeared  to 
Cambridge  of  the  last  literary  quality ;  their  fame  was 
with  a  world  too  vast  to  be  the  test  that  her  own 

"One  entire  and  perfect  crysolite" 

would  have  formed.  Whittier  in  fact  had  not  arrived 
at  the  clear  splendor  of  his  later  work  without  some 
earlier  turbidity;  he  was  still  from  time  to  time  ca 
pable  of  a  false  rhyme,  like  morn  and  dawn.  As  for 
the  author  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  her  syntax  was  such 
a  snare  to  her  that  it  sometimes  needed  the  combined 
skill  of  all  the  proof-readers  and  the  assistant  editor 
to  extricate  her.  Of  course,  nothing  was  ever  written 
into  her  work,  but  in  changes  of  diction,  in  correction 
of  solecisms,  in  transposition  of  phrases,  the  text  was 
largely  rewritten  on  the  margin  of  her  proofs.  The 
soul  of  her  art  was  present,  but  the  form  was  so  often 
absent,  that  when  it  was  clothed  on  anew,  it  would 
have  been  hard  to  say  whose  cut  the  garment  was  of 
in  many  places.  In  fact,  the  proof-reading  of  the  At 
lantic  Monthly  was  something  almost  fearfully  scrupu 
lous  and  perfect.  The  proofs  were  first  read  by  the 
under  proof-reader  in  the  printing-office;  then  the 
head  reader  passed  them  to  me  perfectly  clean  as  to 
typography,  with  his  own  abundant  and  most  intelli 
gent  comments  on  the  literature ;  and  then  I  read  them, 

isa 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

making  what  changes  I  chose,  and  verifying  every  quo 
tation,  every  date,  every  geographical  and  biographical 
name,  every  foreign  word  to  the  last  accent,  every  tech 
nical  and  scientific  term.  Where  it  was  possible  or 
at  all  desirable  the  proof  was  next  submitted  to  the 
author.  When  it  came  back  to  me,  I  revised  it,  accept 
ing  or  rejecting  the  author's  judgment  according  as 
he  was  entitled  by  his  ability  and  knowledge  or  not  to 
have  them.  The  proof  now  went  to  the  printers  for 
correction;  they  sent  it  again  to  the  head  reader,  who 
carefully  revised  it  and  returned  it  again  to  me.  I  read 
it  a  second  time,  and  it  was  again  corrected.  After  this 
it  was  revised  in  the  office  and  sent  to  the  stereotyper, 
from  whom  it  came  to  the  head  reader  for  a  last  re 
vision  in  the  plates. 

It  would  not  do  to  say  how  many  of  the  first  Ameri 
can  writers  owed  their  correctness  in  print  to  the  zeal 
of  our  proof-reading,  but  I  may  say  that  there  were 
very  few  who  did  not  owe  something.  The  wisest 
and  ablest  were  the  most  patient  and  grateful,  like 
Mrs.  Stowe,  under  correction;  it  was  only  the  begin 
ners  and  the  more  ignorant  who  were  angry;  and  al 
most  always  the  proof-reading  editor  had  his  way  on 
disputed  points.  I  look  back  now,  with  respectful 
amazement  at  my  proficiency  in  detecting  the  errors 
of  the  great  as  well  as  the  little.  I  was  able  to  dis 
cover  mistakes  even  in  the  classical  quotations  of  the 
deeply  lettered  Simmer,  and  I  remember,  in  the  ear 
liest  years  of  my  service  on  the  Atlantic,  waiting  in 
this  statesman's  study  amidst  the  prints  and  engrav 
ings  that  attested  his  personal  resemblance  to  Edmund 
Burke,  with  his  proofs  in  my  hand  and  my  heart  in  my 
mouth,  to  submit  my  doubts  of  his  Latinity.  I  forget 
how  he  received  them;  but  he  was  not  a  very  gracioua 
person. 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Mrs.  Stowe  was  a  gracious  person,  and  carried  into 
age  the  inalienable  charm  of  a  woman  who  must  have 
been  very  charming  earlier.  I  met  her  only  at  the 
Fieldses'  in  Boston,  where  one  night  I  witnessed  a 
controversy  between  her  and  Doctor  Holmes  concerning 
homo3Opathy  and  allopathy  which  lasted  well  through 
dinner.  After  this  lapse  of  time,  I  cannot  tell  how 
the  affair  ended,  but  I  feel  sure  of  the  liking  with 
which  Mrs.  Stowe  inspired  me.  There  was  something 
very  simple,  very  motherly  in  her,  and  something  di 
vinely  sincere.  She  was  quite  the  person  to  take  au 
grand  serienx  the  monstrous  imaginations  of  Lady 
Byron's  jealousy  and  to  feel  it  on  her  conscience  to 
make  public  report  of  them  when  she  conceived  that 
the  time  had  come  to  do  so. 


XI 


In  Francis  Parkman  I  knew  much  later  than  in 
some  others  a  differentiation  of  the  New  England  type 
which  was  not  less  characteristic.  He,  like  so  many 
other  Boston  men  of  letters,  was  of  patrician  family, 
and  of  those  easy  fortunes  which  Clio  prefers  her  sons 
to  be  of;  but  he  paid  for  these  advantages  by  the  suf 
fering  in  which  he  wrought  at  what  is,  I  suppose,  our 
greatest  history.  He  wrought  at  it  piecemeal,  and 
sometimes  only  by  moments,  when  the  terrible  head 
aches  which  tormented  him,  and  the  disorder  of  the 
heart  which  threatened  his  life,  allowed  him  a  brief 
respite  for  the  task  which  was  dear  to  him.  He  must 
have  been  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  com 
pleting  it,  and  in  this  time,  as  he  once  told  me,  it  had 
given  him  a  day-laborer's  wages ;  but  of  course  money 
was  the  least  return  he  wished  from  it.  I  read  the  ir 
regularly  successive  volumes  of  The  Jesuits  in  North 

140 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

'America,  The  Old  Regime  in  Canada,  the  Wolfe  and 
Montcalm,and  the  others  that  went  to  make  up  the  whole 
history  with  a  sufficiently  noisy  enthusiasm,  and  our 
acquaintance  began  by  his  expressing  his  gratification 
with  the  praises  of  them  that  I  had  put  in  print.  We 
entered  into  relations  as  contributor  and  editor,  and  I 
know  that  he  was  pleased  with  my  eagerness  to  get  as 
many  detachable  chapters  from  the  book  in  hand  as 
he  could  give  me  for  the  magazine,  but  he  was  of  too 
fine  a  politeness  to  make  this  the  occasion  of  his  first 
coming  to  see  me.  He  had  walked  out  to  Cambridge, 
where  I  then  lived,  in  pursuance  of  a  regimen  which, 
I  believe,  finally  built  up  his  health;  that  it  was  un 
sparing,  I  can  testify  from  my  own  share  in  one  of  his 
constitutionals  in  Boston,  many  years  later. 

His  experience  in  laying  the  groundwork  for  his 
history,  and  his  researches  in  making  it  thorough,  were 
such  as  to  have  liberated  him  to  the  knowledge  of  other 
manners  and  ideals,  but  he  remained  strictly  a  Bosto- 
nian,  and  as  immutably  of  the  Boston  social  and  literary 
faith  as  any  I  knew  in  that  capital  of  accomplished 
facts.  He  had  lived  like  an  Indian  among  the  wild 
Western  tribes;  he  consorted  with  the  Canadian  archae 
ologists  in  their  mousings  among  the  colonial  archives 
of  their  fallen  state ;  every  year  he  went  to  Quebec  or 
Paris  to  study  the  history  of  New  France  in  the  origi 
nal  documents;  European  society  was  open  to  him 
everywhere ;  but  he  had  those  limitations  which  I  near 
ly  always  found  in  the  Boston  men.  I  remember  his 
talking  to  me  of  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapliam,  in  a  some 
what  troubled  and  uncertain  strain,  and  interpreting 
his  rise  as  the  achievement  of  social  recognition,  with 
out  much  or  at  all  liking  it  or  me  for  it.  I  did  not 
think  it  my  part  to  point  out  that  I  had  supposed  the 
rise  to  be  a  moral  one ;  and  later  I  fell  under  his  coudeui- 

141 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

nation  for  certain  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors  I  had 
been  guilty  of  against  a  well-known  ideal  in  fiction. 
These  in  fact  constituted  lese-majesty  of  romanticism, 
which  seemed  to  be  disproportionately  dear  to  a  man 
who  was  in  his  own  way  trying  to  tell  the  truth  of  hu 
man  nature  as  I  was  in  mine.  His  displeasures  pass 
ed,  however,  and  my  last  meeting  with  our  greatest 
historian,  as  I  think  him,  was  of  unalloyed  friendli 
ness.  He  came  to  me  during  my  final  year  in  Boston 
for  nothing  apparently  but  to  tell  me  of  his  liking  for 
a  book  of  mine  describing  boy-life  in  Southern  Ohio 
a  half-century  ago.  He  wished  to  talk  about  many 
points  of  this,  which  he  found  the  same  as  his  own  boy- 
life  in  the  neighborhood  of  Boston ;  and  we  could  agree 
that  the  life  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  boy  was  pretty  much 
the  same  everywhere.  He  had  helped  himself  into  my 
apartment  with  a  crutch,  but  I  do  not  remember  how 
he  had  fallen  lame.  It  was  the  end  of  his  long  walks, 
I  believe,  and  not  long  afterwards  I  had  the  grief  to 
read  of  his  death.  I  noticed  that  perhaps  through  his 
enforced  quiet,  he  had  put  on  weight;  his  fine  face  was 
full ;  whereas  when  I  first  knew  him  he  was  almost 
delicately  thin  of  figure  and  feature.  He  was  always 
of  a  distinguished  presence,  and  his  face  had  a  great 
distinction. 

It  had  not  the  appealing  charm  I  found  in 
the  face  of  James  Parton,  another  historian  I  knew 
earlier  in  my  Boston  days.  I  cannot  say  how  much 
his  books,  once  so  worthily  popular,  are  now  known, 
but  I  have  an  abiding  sense  of  their  excellence.  I 
have  not  read  the  Life  of  Voltaire,  which  was  the  last, 
but  all  the  rest,  from  the  first,  I  have  read,  and  if  there 
are  better  American  biographies  than  those  of  Frank 
lin  or  of  Jefferson,  I  could  not  say  where  to  find  them. 
The  Greeley  and  the  Burr  were  younger  books,  and  so 

142 


LITERARY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

was  the  Jackson,  and  they  were  not  nearly  so  good; 
but  to  all  the  author  had  imparted  the  valuable  human 
ity  in  which  he  abounded.  He  was  never  of  the  fine 
world  of  literature,  the  world  that  sniffs  and  sneers, 
and  abashes  the  simpler-hearted  reader.  But  he  was  a 
true  artist,  and  English  born  as  he  was,  he  divined 
American  character  as  few  Americans  have  done.  He 
was  a  man  of  eminent  courage,  and  in  the  days  when  to 
be  an  agnostic  was  to  be  almost  an  outcast,  he  had  the 
heart  to  say  of  the  Mysteries,  that  he  did  not  know. 
He  outlived  the  condemnation  that  this  brought,  and 
I  think  that  no  man  ever  came  near  him  without  in 
some  measure  loving  him.  To  me  he  was  of  a  most 
winning  personality,  which  his  strong,  gentle  face  ex 
pressed,  and  a  cast  in  the  eye  \vhich  he  could  not  bring 
to  bear  directly  upon  his  vis-a-vis,  endeared.  I 
never  met  him  without  wishing  more  of  his  company, 
for  he  seldom  failed  to  say  something  to  whatever  was 
most  humane  and  most  modern  in  me.  Our  last  meet 
ing  was  at  Newburyport,  whither  he  had  long  before 
removed  from  New  York,  and  where  in  the  serene  at 
mosphere  of  the  ancient  Puritan  town  he  found  leisure 
and  inspiration  for  his  work.  He  was  not  then  en 
gaged  upon  any  considerable  task,  and  he  had  aged  and 
broken  somewhat.  But  the  old  geniality,  the  old 
warmth  glowed  in  him,  and  made  a  summer  amidst 
the  storm  of  snow  that  blinded  the  wintry  air  without. 
A  new  light  had  then  lately  come  into  my  life,  by 
which  I  saw  all  things  that  did  not  somehow  tell  for 
human  brotherhood  dwarfish  and  ugly,  and  he  listened, 
as  I  imagined,  to  what  I  had  to  say  with  the  tolerant 
sympathy  of  a  man  who  has  been  a  long  time  thinking 
those  things,  and  views  with  a  certain  amusement  the 
zeal  of  the  fresh  discoverer. 

There  was  yet  another  historian  in  Boston,  whose 
'143 


acquaintance  I  made  later  than  either  Parkman's  or 
Parton's,  and  whose  very  recent  death  leaves  me  with 
the  grief  of  a  friend.  No  one,  indeed,  could  meet  John 
Codman  Ropes  without  wishing  to  be  his  friend,  or  with 
out  finding  a  friend  in  him.  He  had  his  likes  and  his 
dislikes,  but  he  could  have  had  no  enmities  except  for  evil 
and  meanness.  I  never  knew  a  man  of  higher  soul,  of 
sweeter  nature,  and  his  whole  life  was  a  monument  of 
character.  It  cannot  wound  him  now  to  speak  of  the 
cruel  deformity  which  came  upon  him  in  his  boyhood, 
and  haunted  all  his  after  days  with  suffering.  His 
gentle  face  showed  the  pain  which  is  always  the  part  of 
the  hunchback,  but  nothing  else  in  him  confessed  a 
sense  of  his  affliction,  and  the  resolute  activity  of  his 
mind  denied  it  in  every  way.  He  was,  as  is  well  known, 
a  very  able  lawyer,  in  full  practice,  while  he  was  making 
his  studies  of  military  history,  and  winning  recognition 
for  almost  unique  insight  and  thoroughness  in  that  direc 
tion,  though  I  believe  that  when  he  came  to  embody  the 
results  in  those  extraordinary  volumes  recording  the 
battles  of  our  civil  war,  he  retired  from  the  law  in 
some  measure.  He  knew  these  battles  more  accurately 
than  the  generals  who  fought  them,  and  he  was  of  a  like 
proficiency  in  the  European  wars  from  the  time  of 
Napoleon  down  to  our  own  time.  I  have  heard  a  story, 
which  I  cannot  vouch  for,  that  when  foreknowledge  of 
his  affliction,  at  the  outbreak  of  our  civil  war,  forbade 
him  to  be  a  soldier,  he  became  a  student  of  soldiership, 
and  wreaked  in  that  sort  the  passion  of  his  most  gallant 
spirit.  But  whether  this  was  true  or  not,  it  is  certain 
that  he  pursued  the  study  with  a  devotion  which  never 
blinded  him  to  the  atrocity  of  war.  Some  wars  he  could 
excuse  and  even  justify,  but  for  any  war  that  seemed 
wanton  or  aggressive,  he  had  only  abhorrence. 

The  last  summer  of  a  score  that  I  had  known  him, 
144 


LITERAEY  BOSTON  AS  I  KNEW  IT 

we  sat  on  the  veranda  of  his  cottage  at  York  Ilarhor, 
and  looked  out  over  the  moonlit  sea,  and  he  talked  of 
the  high  and  true  things,  with  the  inextinguishable  zest 
for  the  inquiry  which  I  always  found  in  him,  though 
he  was  then  feeling  the  approaches  of  the  malady  which 
was  so  soon  to  end  all  groping  in  these  shadows  for 
him.  He  must  have  faced  the  fact  with  the  same 
courage  and  the  same  trust  with  which  he  faced  all  facts. 
From  the  first  I  found  him  a  deeply  religious  man,  not 
only  in  the  ecclesiastical  sense,  but  in  the  more  mystical 
meanings  of  the  word,  and  he  kept  his  faith  as  he  kept 
his  youth  to  the  last.  Every  one  who  knew  him,  knows 
how  young  he  was  in  heart,  and  how  he  liked  to  have 
those  that  were  young  in  years  about  him.  He  wished 
to  have  his  house  in  Boston,  as  well  as  his  cottage  at 
York,  full  of  young  men  and  young  girls,  whose  joy  of 
life  he  made  his  own,  and  whose  society  he  preferred 
to  his  contemporaries'.  One  could  not  blame  him  for 
that,  or  for  seeking  the  sun,  wherever  he  could,  but  it 
would  be  a  false  notion  of  him  to  suppose  that  his  sym 
pathies  were  solely  or  chiefly  with  the  happy.  In 
every  sort,  as  I  knew  him,  he  was  fine  and  good.  The 
word  is  not  worthy  of  him,  after  some  of  its  uses  and 
associations,  but  if  it  were  unsmutched  by  these,  and 
whitened  to  its  primitive  significance,  I  should  say 
he  was  one  of  the  most  perfect  gentlemen  I  ever  knew. 


part  ffiftb 
OLIVER  WENDELL   HOLMES 

ELSEWHERE  we  literary  folk  are  apt  to  be  such 
a  common  lot,  with  tendencies  here  and  there  to 
be  a  shabby  lot ;  we  arrive  from  all  sorts  of  unexpected 
holes  and  corners  of  the  earth,  remote,  obscure ;  and  at 
the  best  we  do  so  often  come  up  out  of  the  ground ;  but 
at  Boston  we  were  of  ascertained  and  noted  origin,  and 
good  part  of  us  dropped  from  the  skies.  Instead  of 
holding  horses  before  the  doors  of  theatres ;  or  capping 
verses  at  the  plough-tail ;  or  tramping  over  Europe  with 
nothing  but  a  flute  in  the  pocket ;  or  walking  up  to  the 
metropolis  with  no  luggage  but  the  MS.  of  a  tragedy; 
or  sleeping  in  doorways  or  under  the  arches  of  bridges ; 
or  serving  as  apothecaries'  'prentices — we  were  good 
society  from  the  beginning.  I  think  this  was  none  the 
worse  for  us,  and  it  was  vastly  the  better  for  good  so 
ciety. 

I 

Literature  in  Boston,  indeed,  was  so  respectable,  and 
often  of  so  high  a  lineage,  that  to  be  a  poet  was  not  only 
to  be  good  society,  but  almost  to  be  good  family.  If 
one  names  over  the  men  who  gave  Boston  her  suprem 
acy  in  literature  during  that  Unitarian  harvest-time 
of  the  old  Puritanic  seed-time  which  was  her  Augustan 
age,  one  names  the  people  who  were  and  who  had  been 
socially  first  in  the  city  ever  since  the  self -exile  of  the 

146 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

Tories  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  To  say  Prescott, 
Motley,  Parkman,  Lowell,  Norton,  Higginson,  Dana, 
Emerson,  Channing,  was  to  say  patrician,  in  the  truest 
and  often  the  best  sense,  if  not  the  largest.  Boston  was 
small,  but  these  were  of  her  first  citizens,  and  their 
primacy,  in  its  \vay,  was  of  the  same  quality  as  that, 
say,  of  the  chief  families  of  Venice.  But  these  names 
can  never  have  the  effect  for  the  stranger  that  they  had 
for  one  to  the  manner  born.  I  say  had,  for  I  doubt 
whether  in  Boston  they  still  mean  all  that  they  once 
meant,  and  that  their  equivalents  meant  in  science,  in 
law,  in  politics.  The  most  famous,  if  not  the  greatest 
of  all  the  literary  men  of  Boston,  I  have  not  mentioned 
with  them,  for  Longfellow  was  not  of  the  place,  though 
by  his  sympathies  and  relations  he  became  of  it;  and  I 
have  not  mentioned  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  because 
I  think  his  name  would  come  first  into  the  reader's 
thought  with  the  suggestion  of  social  quality  in  the 
humanities. 

Holmes  was  of  the  Brahminical  caste  which  his  hu 
morous  recognition  invited  from  its  subjectivity  in 
the  New  England  consciousness  into  the  light  where 
all  could  know  it  and  own  it,  and  like  Longfellow  he 
was  allied  to  the  patriciate  of  Boston  by  the  most 
intimate  ties  of  life.  For  a  long  time,  for  the  whole 
first  period  of  his  work,  he  stood  for  that  alone,  its 
tastes,  its  prejudices,  its  foibles  even,  and  when  he  came 
to  stand  in  his  second  period,  for  vastly,  for  infinitely 
more,  and  to  make  friends  with  the  whole  race,  as  few 
men  have  ever  done,  it  was  always,  I  think,  with  a 
secret  shiver  of  doubt,  a  backward  look  of  longing,  and 
an  eve  askance.  He  was  himself  perfectly  aware  of  this 
at  times,  and  would  mark  Ins  several  misgivings 
a  humorous  sense  of  the  situation.  He  was  essentially 
too  kind  to  be  of  a  narrow  world,  too  human  to  be  fin- 
ii  147 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

ally  of  less  than  humanity,  too  gentle  to  be  of  the  finest 
gentility.  But  such  limitations  as  he  had  were  in  the 
direction  I  have  hinted,  or  perhaps  more  than  hinted; 
and  I  am  by  no  means  ready  to  make  a  mock  of  them, 
as  it  would  be  so  easy  to  do  for  some  reasons  that  he 
has  himself  suggested.  To  value  aright  the  affection 
which  the  old  Bostonian  had  for  Boston  one  must  con 
ceive  of  something  like  the  patriotism  of  men  in  the 
times  when  a  man's  city  was  a  man's  country,  some 
thing  Athenian,  something  Florentine.  The  war  that 
nationalized  us  liberated  this  love  to  the  whole  country, 
but  its  first  tenderness  remained  still  for  Boston,  and 
I  suppose  a  Bostonian  still  thinks  of  himself  first  as  a 
Bostonian  and  then  as  an  American,  in  a  way  that  no 
New-Yorker  could  deal  with  himself.  The  rich  his 
torical  background  dignifies  and  ennobles  the  intense 
public  spirit  of  the  place,  and  gives  it  a  kind  of  per 
sonality. 

II 

In  literature  Doctor  Holmes  survived  all  the  Bos- 
tonians  who  had  given  the  city  her  primacy  in  letters, 
but  when  I  first  knew  him  there  was  no  apparent  ground 
for  questioning  it.  I  do  not  mean  now  the  time  when 
I  visited  New  England,  but  when  I  came  to  live  near 
Boston,  and  to  begin  the  many  happy  years  which  I 
spent  in  her  fine,  intellectual  air.  I  found  time  to  run 
in  upon  him,  while  I  was  there  arranging  to  take  my 
place  on  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  I  remember  that  in 
this  brief  moment  with  him  he  brought  me  to  book 
about  some  vaunting  paragraph  in  the  Nation  claiming 
the  literary  primacy  for  New  York.  He  asked  me  if  I 
knew  who  wrote  it,  and  I  was  obliged  to  own  that  I  had 
written  it  myself,  when  with  the  kindness  he  always 
showed  me  he  protested  against  my  position.  To  tell 

148. 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

the  truth,  I  do  not  think  now  I  had  any  very  good  rea 
sons  for  it,  and  I  certainly  could  urge  none  that  would 
stand  against  his.  I  could  only  fall  back  upon  the 
saving  clause  that  this  primacy  was  claimed  mainly  if 
not  wholly  for  New  York  in  the  future.  He  was  will 
ing  to  leave  me  the  connotations  of  prophecy,  but  I 
think  he  did  even  this  out  of  politeness  rather  than  con 
viction,  and  I  believe  he  had  always  a  sensitiveness 
where  Boston  was  concerned,  which  could  not  seem  un- 


DR.  HOLMES'  HANDWRITING 


generous  to  any  generous  mind.     Whatever  lingering 
doubt  of  me  he  may  have  had,  with  reference  to  Bos 
ton,  seemed  to  satisfy  itself  when  several  years  after 
wards  he  happened  to  speak  of  a  certain  character  in  an 
early  novel  of  mine,  who  was  not  quite  the  kind  of  . 
tonian  one  could  wish  to  be.     The  thing  came  up  m 
talk  with  another  person,  who  had  referred  to  my  J 
tonian,    and    the    doctor    had    apparently    made    his 
acquaintance  in  the  book,  and  not  liked  hum 
derstood,  of  course,"  he  said,  «  that  he  was  a  Boston^ 
not  the  Bostonian,"  and  I  could  truthfully  answer  that 
this  was  by  all  means  my  own  understanding  too. 

149 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

His  fondness  for  his  city,  which  no  one  could  appre 
ciate  better  than  myself,  I  hope,  often  found  expression 
in  a  burlesque  excess  in  his  writings,  and  in  his  talk 
perhaps  oftener  still.  Hard  upon  my  return  from 
Venice  I  had  a  half-hour  with  him  in  his  old  study  on 
Charles  Street,  where  he  still  lived  in  1865,  and  while 
I  was  there  a  young  man  came  in  for  the  doctor's  help 
as  a  physician,  though  he  looked  so  very  well,  and  was 
so  lively  and  cheerful,  that  I  have  since  had  my  doubts 
whether  he  had  not  made  a  pretext  for  a  glimpse  of  him 
as  the  Autocrat.  The  doctor  took  him  upon  his  word, 
however,  and  said  he  had  been  so  long  out  of  practice 
that  he  could  not  do  anything  for  him,  but  he  gave  him 
the  address  of  another  physician,  somewhere  near  Wash 
ington  Street.  "  And  if  you  don't  know  where  Wash- 
irigton  Street  is,"  he  said,  with  a  gay  burst  at  a  certain 
vagueness  which  had  come  into  the  young  man's  face, 
"  you  don't  know  anything." 

We  had  been  talking  of  Venice,  and  what  life  was 
like  there,  and  he  made  me  tell  him  in  some  detail.  He 
was  especially  interested  in  what  I  had  to  say  of  the 
minute  subdivision  and  distribution  of  the  necessaries, 
the  small  coins,  and  the  small  values  adapted  to  their 
purchase,  the  intensely  retail  character,  in  fact,  of 
household  provisioning ;  and  I  could  see  how  he  pleased 
himself  in  formulating  the  theory  that  the  higher  a 
civilization  the  finer  the  apportionment  of  the  demands 
and  supplies.  The  ideal,  he  said,  was  a  civilization  in 
which  you  could  buy  two  cents'  worth  of  beef,  and  a  di 
vergence  from  this  standard  was  towards  barbarism. 

The  secret  of  the  man  who  is  universally  interesting 
is  that  he  is  universally  interested,  and  this  was,  above 
all,  the  secret  of  the  charm  that  Doctor  Holmes  hadjfor 
every  one.  No  doubt  he  knew  it,  for  what  that  most 
alert  intelligence  did  not  know  of  itself  was  scarcely 

150 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

worth  knowing.  This  knowledge  was  one  of  his  chief 
pleasures,  I  fancy;  he  rejoiced  in  the  consciousness 
which  is  one  of  the  highest  attributes  of  the  highly  or 
ganized  man,  and  he  did  not  care  for  the  consequences 
in  your  mind,  if  you  were  so  stupid  as  not  to  take  him 
aright.  I  remember  the  delight  Henry  James,  the 
father  of  the  novelist,  had  in  reporting  to  me  the  frank 
ness  of  the  doctor,  when  he  had  said  to  him,  "  Holmes, 
you  are  intellectually  the  most  alive  man  I  ever  knew." 
"  I  am,  I  am,"  said  the  doctor.  "  From  the  crown  of 
my  head  to  the  sole  of  my  foot,  I'm  alive,  I'm  alive !" 
Any  one  who  ever  saw  him  will  imagine  the  vivid  relish 
he  had  in  recognizing  the  fact.  He  could  not  be  with 
you  a  moment  without  shedding  upon  you  the  light  of 
his  flashing  wit,  his  radiant  humor,  and  he  shone  equally 
upon  the  rich  and  poor  in  mind.  His  gayety  of  heart 
could  not  withhold  itself  from  any  chance  of  response, 
but  he  did  wish  always  to  be  fully  understood,  and  to 
be  liked  by  those  he  liked.  He  gave  his  liking  cau 
tiously,  though,  for  the  affluence  of  his  sympathies  left 
him  without  the  reserves  of  colder  natures,  and  he  had 
to  make  up  for  these  with  careful  circumspection.  He 
wished  to  know  the  character  of  the  person  who  made 
overtures  to  his  acquaintance,  for  he  was  aware  that 
his  friendship  lay  close  to  it ;  he  wanted  to  be  sure  that 
he  was  a  nice  person,  and  though  I  think  he  preferred 
social  quality  in  his  fellow-man,  he  did  not  refuse  him 
self  to  those  who  had  merely  a  sweet  and  wholesome  hu 
manity.  He  did  not  like  anything  that  tasted  or  smelt 
of  Bohemianism  in  the  personnel  of  literature,  but  ho 
did  not  mind  the  scent  of  the  new-ploughed  earth,  or 
even  of  the  barn-yard.  I  recall  his  telling  me  once  that 
after  two  younger  brothers-in-lettcrs  had  called  upon 
him  in  the  odor  of  an  habitual  beerincss  and  smokiness, 
he  opened  the  window;  and  the  very  last  time  I  saw 

151 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

him  he  remembered  at  eighty-five  the  offence  h©  had 
found  on  his  first  visit  to  New  York,  when  a  metropol 
itan  poet  had  asked  him  to  lunch  in  a  basement  restau 
rant. 

Ill 

He  seemed  not  to  mind,  however,  climbing  to  the  lit 
tle  apartment  we  had  in  Boston  when  we  came  there  in 
1866,  and  he  made  this  call  upon  us  in  due  form, 
bringing  Mrs.  Holmes  with  him  as  if  to  accent  the 
recognition  socially.  We  were  then  incredibly  young, 
much  younger  than  I  find  people  ever  are  nowadays, 
and  in  the  consciousness  of  our  youth  we  felt,  to  the  last 
exquisite  value  of  the  fact,  what  it  was  to  have  the 
Autocrat  come  to  see  us ;  and  I  believe  he  was  not  dis 
pleased  to  perceive  this;  he  liked  to  know  that  you  felt 
his  quality  in  every  way.  That  first  winter,  however, 
I  did  not  see  him  often,  and  in  the  spring  we  went  to 
live  in  Cambridge,  and  thereafter  I  met  him  chiefly  at 
Longfellow's,  or  when  I  came  in  to  dine  at  the  Fieldses', 
in  Boston.  It  was  at  certain  meetings  of  the  Dante 
Club,  when  Longfellow  read  aloud  his  translation  for 
criticism,  and  there  was  supper  later,  that  one  saw  the 
doctor;  and  his  voice  was  heard  at  the  supper  rather 
than  at  the  criticism,  for  he  was  no  Italianate.  He  al 
ways  seemed  to  like  a  certain  turn  of  the  talk  toward  the 
mystical,  but  with  space  for  the  feet  on  a  firm  ground 
of  fact  this  side  of  the  shadows ;  when  it  came  to  going 
over  among  them,  and  laying  hold  of  them  with  the 
hand  of  faith,  as  if  they  were  substance,  he  was  not  of 
the  excursion.  It  is  well  known  how  fervent,  I  cannot 
say  devout,  a  spiritualist  Longfellow's  brother-in-law, 
Appleton,  was;  and  when  he  was  at  the  table  too,  it 
took  all  the  poet's  delicate  skill  to  keep  him  and  the 
Autocrat  from  involving  themselves  in  a  cataclysmal 

-152 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

controversy  upon  the  matter  of  manifestations.  With 
Doctor  Holmes  the  inquiry  was  inquiry,  to  the  last,  I 
believe,  and  the  burden  of  proof  was  left  to  the  ghosts 
and  their  friends.  His  attitude  was  strictly  scientific; 
he  denied  nothing,  but  he  expected  the  supernatural  to 
be  at  least  as  convincing  as  the  natural. 

There  was  a  time  in  his  history  when  the  popular 
ignorance  classed  him  with  those  who  were  once  rudely 
called  infidels ;  but  the  world  has  since  gone  so  fast  and 
so  far  that  the  mind  he  was  of  concerning  religious  be 
lief  would  now  be  thought  religious  by  a  good  half  of 
the  religious  world.  It  is  true  that  he  had  and  always 
kept  a  grudge  against  the  ancestral  Calvinism  which 
afflicted  his  youth;  and  he  was  through  all  rises  and 
lapses  of  opinion  essentially  Unitarian;  but  of  the 
honest  belief  of  any  one,  I  am  sure  he  never  felt  or 
spoke  otherwise  than  most  tolerantly,  most  tenderly. 
As  often  as  he  spoke  of  religion,  and  his  talk  tended  to 
it  very  often,  I  never  heard  an  irreligious  word  from 
him,  far  less  a  scoff  or  sneer  at  religion ;  and  I  am  cer 
tain  that  this  was  not  merely  because  he  would  have 
thought  it  bad  taste,  though  undoubtedly  he  would  have 
thought  it  bad  taste ;  I  think  it  annoyed,  it  hurt  him,  to 
be  counted  among  the  iconoclasts,  and  he  would  have 
been  profoundly  grieved  if  he  could  have  known  how 
widely  this  false  notion  of  him  once  prevailed.  It  can 
do  no  harm  at  this  late  day  to  impart  from  the  secrets 
of  the  publishing  house  the  fact  that  a  supposed  in 
fidelity  in  the  tone  of  his  story  The  Guardian  Angel 
cost  the  Atlantic  Monthly  many  subscribers.  Now 
the  tone  of  that  story  would  not  be  thought  even  mildly 
agnostic,  I  fancy;  and  long  before  his  death  the  author 
had  outlived  the  error  concerning  him. 

It  was  not  the  best  of  his  stories,  by  any  means,  and 
it  would  not  be  too  harsh  to  say  that  it  was  the  poorest. 

153 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

His  novels  all  belonged  to  an  order  of  romance  which 
was  as  distinctly  his  own  as  the  form  of  dramatized 
essay, which  he  invented  in  the  Autocrat.  If  he  did 
not  think  poorly  of  them,  he  certainly  did  not  think  too 
proudly,  and  I  heard  him  quote  with  relish  the  phrase 
of  a  lady  who  had  spoken  of  them  to  him  as  his  "  medi 
cated  novels."  That,  indeed,  was  perhaps  what  they 
were;  a  faint,  faint  odor  of  the  pharmacopoeia  clung 
to  their  pages;  their  magic  was  scientific.  He  knew 
this  better  than  any  one  else,  of  course,  and  if  any  one 
had  said  it  in  his  turn  he  would  hardly  have  minded 
it.  But  what  he  did  mind  was  the  persistent  misin 
terpretation  of  his  intention  in  certain  quarters  where 
he  thought  he  had  the  right  to  respectful  criticism  in 
stead  of  the  succession  of  sneers  that  greeted  the  suc 
cessive  numbers  of  his  story;  and  it  was  no  secret  that 
he  felt  the  persecution  keenly.  Perhaps  he  thought 
that  he  had  already  reached  that  time  in  his  literary 
life  when  he  was  a  fact  rather  than  a  question,  and 
when  reasons  and  not  feelings  must  have  to  do  with  his 
acceptance  or  rejection.  But  he  had  to  live  many 
years  yet  before  lie  reached  this  state.  When  he  did 
reach  it,  happily  a  good  while  before  his  death,  I  do  not 
believe  any  man  ever  enjoyed  the  like  condition  more. 
He  loved  to  feel  himself  out  of  the  fight,  with  much 
work  before  him  still,  but  with  nothing  that  could  pro 
voke  ill-will  in  his  activities.  He  loved  at  all  times  to 
take  himself  objectively,  if  I  may  so  express  my  sense 
of  a  mental  attitude  that  misled  many.  As  I  have  said 
before,  he  was  universally  interested,  and  he  studied 
the  universe  from  himself.  I  do  not  know  how  one 
is  to  study  it  otherwise;  the  impersonal  has  really  no 
existence ;  but  with  all  his  subtlety  and  depth  he  was  of 
a  make  so  simple,  of  a  spirit  so  naive,  that  he  could  not 
practise  the  feints  some  use  to  conceal  that  interest  in 

154: 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

self  which,  after  all,  every  one  knows  is  only  concealed. 
He  frankly  and  joyously  made  himself  the  starting- 
point  in  all  his  inquest  of  the  hearts  and  minds  of  other 
men,  but  so  far  from  singling  himself  out  in  this,  and 
standing  apart  in  it,  there  never  was  any  one  who  was 
more  eagerly  and  gladly  your  fellow-being  in  the  things 
of  the  soul. 

IV 

In  the  things  of  the  world,  he  had  fences,  and  look 
ed  at  some  people  through  palings  and  even  over  the 
broken  bottles  on  the  tops  of  walls ;  and  I  think  he  was 
the  loser  by  this,  as  well  as  they.  But  then  I  think  all 
fences  are  bad,  and  that  God  has  made  enough  differ 
ences  bet  ween  men  ;  we  need  not  trouble  ourselves  to  mul 
tiply  them.  Even  behind  his  fences,  however,  Holmes 
had  a  heart  kind  for  the  outsiders,  and  I  do  not  believe 
any  one  came  into  personal  relations  with  him  who  did 
not  experience  this  kindness.  In  that  long  and  de 
lightful  talk  I  had  with  him  on  my  return  from  Ven 
ice  (I  can  praise  the  talk  because  it  was  mainly  his), 
we  spoke  of  the  status  of  domestics  in  the  Old  World, 
and  how  fraternal  the  relation  of  high  and  low  was  in 
Italy,  while  in  England,  between  master  and  man,  it 
seemed  without  acknowledgment  of  their  common  hu 
manity.  "  Yes,"  he  said,  "  I  always  felt  as  if  English 
servants  expected  to  be  trampled  on ;  but  I  can't  do  that. 
If  they  want  to  be  trampled  on,  they  must  get  some 
one  else."  He  thought  that  our  American  way  was  in 
finitely  better ;  and  I  believe  that  in  spite  of  the  fences 
there  was  always  an  instinctive  impulse  with  him  to 
get  upon  common  ground  with  his  fellow-man.  I  used 
to  notice  in  the  neighborhood  cabman  who  served  our 
block  on  Beacon  Street  a  sort  of  affectionate  reverence 
for  the  Autocrat,  which  could  have  come  from  nothing 

155 


LITERAKY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

but  the  kindly  terms  between  them ;  if  you  went  to  him 
when  he  was  engaged  to  Doctor  Holmes,  he  told  you 
so  with  a  sort  of  implication  in  his  manner  that  the 
thought  of  anything  else  for  the  time  was  profanation. 
The  good  fellow  who  took  him  his  drives  about  the 
Beverly  and  Manchester  shores  seemed  to  be  quite  in 
the  joke  of  the  doctor's  humor,  and  within  the  bounds 
of  his  personal  modesty  and  his  functional  dignity  per 
mitted  himself  a  smile  at  the  doctor's  sallies,  when  you 
stood  talking  with  him,  or  listening  to  him  at  the  car 
riage-side. 

The  civic  and  social  circumstance  that  a  man  values 
himself  on  is  commonly  no  part  of  his  value,  and  cer 
tainly  no  part  of  his  greatness.  Rather,  it  is  the  very 
thing  that  limits  him,  and  I  think  that  Doctor  Holmes 
appeared  in  the  full  measure  of  his  generous  person 
ality  to  those  who  did  not  and  could  not  appreciate  his 
circumstance,  and  not  to  those  who  formed  it,  and  who 
from  life-long  association  were*  so.  dear  and  comfortable 
to  him.  Those  who  best  knew  how  great  a  man  he  was 
were  those  who  came  from  far  to  pay  him  their  duty, 
or  to  thank  him  for  some  help  they  had  got  from  his 
books,  or  to  ask  his  counsel  or  seek  his  sympathy.  With 
all  such  he  was  most  winningly  tender,  most  intelli 
gently  patient.  I  suppose  no  great  author  was  ever 
more  visited  by  letter  and  in  person  than  he,  or  kept 
a  faithfuler  conscience  for  his  guests.  With  those 
who  appeared  to  him  in  the  flesh  he  used  a  miraculous 
tact,  and  I  fancy  in  his  treatment  of  all  the  physician 
native  in  him  bore  a  characteristic  part.  ISTo  one 
seemed  to  be  denied  access  to  him,  but  it  was  after  a 
moment  of  preparation  that  one  was  admitted,  and 
any  one  who  was  at  all  sensitive  must  have  felt  from 
the  first  moment  in  his  presence  that  there  could  be  no 
trespassing  in  point  of  time.  If  now  and  then  some 

156 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

insensitive  began  to  trespass,  there  was  a  sliding-scale 
of  dismissal  that  never  failed  of  its  work,  and  that  real 
ly  saved  the  author  from  the  effect  of  intrusion.  He 
was  not  bored  because  he  would  not  be. 

I  transfer  at  random  the  impressions  of  many  years 
to  my  page,  and  I  shall  not  try  to  observe  a  chron 
ological  order  in  these  memories.  Vivid  among  them 
is  that  of  a  visit  which  I  paid  him  with  Osgood  the 
publisher,  then  newly  the  owner  of  the  Atlantic  Month 
ly,  when  I  had  newly  become  the  sole  editor.  We 
wished  to  signalize  our  accession  to  the  control  of  the 
magazine  by  a  stroke  that  should  tell  most  in  the  public 
eye,  and  we  thought  of  asking  Doctor  Holmes  to  do 
something  again  in  the  manner  of  the  Autocrat  and  the 
Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table.  Some  letters  had 
passed  between  him  and  the  management  concerning 
our  wish,  and  then  Osgood  thought  that  it  would  be 
right  and  fit  for  us  to  go  to  him  in  person.  He  pro 
posed  the  visit,  and  Doctor  Holmes  received  us  with 
a  mind  in  which  he  had  evidently  formulated  all  his 
thoughts  upon  the  matter.  His  main  question  was 
whether  at  his  age  of  sixty  years  a  man  was  justified 
in  seeking  to  recall  a  public  of  the  past,  or  to  create 
a  new  public  in  the  present.  He  seemed  to  have  look 
ed  the  ground  over  not  only  with  a  personal  interest  in 
the  question,  but  with  a  keen  scientific  zest  for  it  as 
something  which  it  was  delightful  to  consider  in  its 
generic  relations;  and  I  fancy  that  the  pleasure  of 
this  inquiry  more  than  consoled  him  for  such  pangs 
of  misgiving  as  he  must  have  had  in  the  personal  ques 
tion.  As  commonly  happens  in  the  solution  of  such 
problems,  it  was  not  solved ;  he  was  very  willing  to  take 
our  minds  upon  it,  and  to  incur  the  risk,  if  we  thought 
it  well  and  were  willing  to  share  it. 

We  came  away  rejoicing,  and  the  new  series  began 
157 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

with  the  new  year  following.  It  was  by  no  means  the 
popular  success  that  we  had  hoped;  not  because  the 
author  had  not  a  thousand  new  things  to  say,  or 
failed  to  say  them  with  the  gust  and  freshness  of  his 
immortal  youth,  but  because  it  was  not  well  to  disturb 
a  form  associated  in  the  public  mind  with  an  achieve 
ment  which  had  become  classic.  It  is  of  the  Autocrat 
of  the  Breakfast  Table  that  people  think,  when  they 
think  of  the  peculiar  species  of  dramatic  essay  which 
the  author  invented,  and  they  think  also  of  the  Pro 
fessor  at  the  Breakfast  Table,  because  he  followed  so 
soon ;  but  the  Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table  came  so  long 
after  that  his  advent  alienated  rather  than  conciliated 
liking.  Very  likely,  if  the  Poet  had  come  first  he 
would  have  had  no  second  place  in  the  affections  of  his 
readers,  for  his  talk  was  full  of  delightful  matter ;  and 
at  least  one  of  the  poems  which  graced  each  instalment 
was  one  of  the  finest  and  greatest  that  Doctor  Holmes 
ever  wrote.  I  mean  "  Homesick  in  Heaven,"  which 
seems  to  me  not  only  what  I  have  said,  but  one  of  the 
most  important,  the  most  profoundly  pathetic  in  the 
language.  Indeed,  I  do  not  know  any  other  that  in 
the  same  direction  goes  so  far  with  suggestion  so  pene 
trating. 

The  other  poems  were  mainly  of  a  cast  which  did 
not  win;  the  metaphysics  in  them  were  too  much  for 
the  human  interest,  and  again  there  rose  a  foolish 
clamor  of  the  creeds  against  him  on  account  of  them. 
The  great  talent,  the  beautiful  and  graceful  fancy,  the 
eager  imagination  of  the  Autocrat  could  not  avail 
in  this  third  attempt,  and  I  suppose  the  Poet  at  the 
Breakfast  Table  must  be  confessed  as  near  a  failure 
as  Doctor  Holmes  could  come.  It  certainly  was  so  in 
the  magazine  which  the  brilliant  success  of  the  first 
had  availed  to  establish  in  the  high  place  the  periodical 

158 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

must  always  hold  in  the  history  of  American  litera 
ture.  Lowell  was  never  tired  of  saying,  when  he  re 
curred  to  the  first  days  of  his  editorship,  that  the  maga 
zine  could  never  have  gone  at  all  without  the  Auto 
crat  papers.  He  was  proud  of  having  insisted  upon 
Holmes's  doing  something  for  the  new  venture,  and  he 
was  fond  of  recalling  the  author's  misgivings  concern 
ing  his  contributions,  which  later  repeated  themselves 
with  too  much  reason,  though  not  with  the  reason  that 
was  in  his  own  mind. 


He  lived  twenty-five  years  after  that  self-question 
at  sixty,  and  after  eighty  he  continued  to  prove  that 
threescore  was  not  the  limit  of  a  man's  intellectual 
activity  or  literary  charm.  During  all  that  time  the 
work  he  did  in  mere  quantity  was  the  work  that  a  man 
in  the  prime  of  life  might  well  have  been  vain  of  doing, 
and  it  was  of  a  quality  not  less  surprising.  If  I  ask 
ed  him  with  any  sort  of  fair  notice  I  could  rely  upon 
him  always  for  something  for  the  January  number, 
and  throughout  the  year  I  could  count  upon  him  for 
those  occasional  pieces  in  which  he  so  easily  excelled 
all  former  writers  of  occasional  verse,  and  which  he 
liked  to  keep  from  the  newspapers  for  the  magazine. 
He  had  a  pride  in  his  promptness  with  copy,  and  you 
could  always  trust  his  promise.  The  printer's  toe 
never  galled  the  author's  kibe  in  his  case ;  he  wished  to 
have  an  early  proof,  which  he  corrected  fastidiously, 
but  not  overmuch,  and  he  did  not  keep  it  long.  Ho 
had  really  done  all  his  work  in  the  manuscript,  which 
came  print-perfect  and  beautifully  clear  from  his  pen, 
in  that  flowing,  graceful  hand  which  to  the  last  kept  a 
suggestion  of  the  pleasure  he  must  have  had  in  it.  Like 

159 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

all  wise  contributors,  he  was  not  only  patient,  but  very 
glad  of  all  the  queries  and  challenges  that  proof-reader 
and  editor  could  accumulate  on  the  margin  of  his 
proofs,  and  when  they  were  both  altogether  wrong  he 
was  still  grateful.  In  one  of  his  poems  there  was 
some  Latin-Quarter  French,  which  our  collective  pur 
ism  questioned,  and  I  remember  how  tender  of  us  he 
was  in  maintaining  that  in  his  Parisian  time,  at  least, 
some  ladies  beyond  the  Seine  said  "  Eh,  b'en,"  instead 
of  "  Eh,  bien."  He  knew  that  we  must  be  always  on 
the  lookout  for  such  little  matters,  and  he  would  not 
wound  our  ignorance. 

I  do  not  think  any  one  enjoyed  praise  more  than  he. 
Of  course  he  would  not  provoke  it,  but  if  it  came  of 
itself,  he  would  not  deny  himself  the  pleasure,  as  long 
as  a  relish  of  it  remained.  He  used  humorously  to 
recognize  his  delight  in  it,  and  to  say  of  the  lecture 
audiences  which  in  earlier  times  hesitated  applause, 
"  Why  don't  they  give  me  three  times  three  ?  I  can 
stand  it!"  He  himself  gave  in  the  generous  fulness 
he  desired.  He  did  not  praise  foolishly  or  dishonest 
ly,  though  he  would  spare  an  open  dislike ;  but  when  a 
thing  pleased  him  he  knew  how  to  say  so  cordially  and 
skilfully,  so  that  it  might  help  as  well  as  delight.  I 
suppose  no  great  author  has  tried  more  sincerely  and 
faithfully  to  befriend  the  beginner  than  he;  and  from 
time  to  time  he  would  commend  something  to  me  that 
he  thought  worth  looking  at,  but  never  insistently. 
In  certain  cases,  where  he  had  simply  to  ease  a  burden, 
from  his  own  to  the  editorial  shoulders,  he  would  ask 
that  the  aspirant  might  be  delicately  treated.  There 
might  be  personal  reasons  for  this,  but  usually  his 
kindness  of  heart  moved  him.  His  tastes  had  their 
geographical  limit,  but  his  sympathies  were  boundless, 
and  the  hopeless  creature  for  whom  he  interceded  was 

160 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES 

oftener  remote  from  Boston  and  New  England  than 
otherwise. 

^  It  seems  to  me  that  he  had  a  nature  singularly  affec 
tionate,  and  that  it  was  this  which  was  at  fault  if  ho 
gave  somewhat  too  much  of  himself  to  the  celebration 
of  the  Class  of  '29,  and  all  the  multitude  of  Boston  oc 
casions,  large  and  little,  embalmed  in  the  clear  amber 
of  his  verse,  somewhat  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  am 
ber.     If  he  were  asked  he  could  not  deny  the  many 
friendships  and  fellowships  which  united  in  the  ask 
ing;  the  immediate  reclame  from  these  things  was  sweet 
to  him ;  but  he  loved  to  comply  as  much  as  he  loved  to  be 
praised.     In  the  pleasure  he  got  he  could  feel  himself 
a  prophet  in  his  own  country,  but  the  country  which 
owned  him  prophet  began  perhaps  to  feel  rather  too 
much  as  if  it  owned  him,  and  did  not  prize  his  vatici 
nations   at   all  their  worth.     Some  polite  Bostonians 
knew  him  chiefly  on  this  side,  and  judged  him  to  their 
own  detriment  from  it. 

VI 

After  we  went  to  live  in  Cambridge,  my  life  and 
the  delight  in  it  were  so  wholly  there  that  in  ten  years 
I  had  hardly  been  in  as  many  Boston  houses.  As  I 
have  said,  I  met  Doctor  Holmes  at  the  Fieldses',  and 
at  Longfellow's,  when  he  came  out  to  a  Dante  supper, 
which  was  not  often,  and  somewhat  later  at  the  Satur 
day  Club  dinners.  One  parlous  time  at  the  publisher's 
I  have  already  recalled,  when  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe  and  the  Autocrat  clashed  upon  homoeopathy,  and 
it  required  all  the  tact  of  the  host  to  lure  them  away 
from  the  dangerous  theme.  As  it  was,  a  battle  waged 
in  the  courteous  forms  of  Fontenoy,  went  on  pretty  well 
through  the  dinner,  and  it  was  only  over  the  coffee  that  a 
truce  was  called.  I  need  not  say  which  was  heterodox, 

161 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

or  that  each  had  a  deep  and  strenuous  conscience  in  the 
matter.  I  have  always  felt  it  a  proof  of  his  extreme 
leniency  to  me,  unworthy,  that  the  doctor  was  able  to 
tolerate  my  own  defection  from  the  elder  faith  in  medi 
cine;  and  I  could  not  feel  his  kindness  less  caressing 
because  I  knew  it  a  concession  to  an  infirmity.  He 
said  something  like,  After  all  a  good  physician  was  the 
great  matter;  and  I  eagerly  turned  his  clemency  to 
praise  of  our  family  doctor. 

He  was  very  constant  at  the  Saturday  Club,  as  long 
as  his  strength  permitted,  and  few  of  its  members 
missed  fewer  of  its  meetings.  He  continued  to  sit  at 
its  table  until  the  ghosts  of  Hawthorne,  of  Agassiz,  of 
Emerson,  of  Longfellow,  of  Lowell,  out  of  others  less 
famous,  bore  him  company  there  among  the  younger 
men  in  the  flesh.  It  must  have  been  very  melancholy, 
but  nothing  could  deeply  cloud  his  most  cheerful  spirit. 
His  strenuous  interest  in  life  kept  him  alive  to  all  the 
things  of  it,  after  so  many  of  his  friends  were  dead. 
The  questions  which  he  was  wont  to  deal  with  so  fond 
ly,  so  wisely,  the  great  problems  of  the  soul,  were  all 
the  more  vital,  perhaps,  because  the  personal  concern  in 
them  was  increased  by  the  translation  to  some  other 
being  of  the  men  who  had  so  often  tried  with  him  to 
fathom  them  here.  The  last  time  I  was  at  that  table  he 
sat  alone  there  among  those  great  memories ;  but  he  was 
as  gay  as  ever  I  saw  him;  his  wit  sparkled,  his  humor 
gleamed ;  the  poetic  touch  was  deft  and  firm  as  of  old ; 
the  serious  curiosity,  the  instant  sympathy  remained. 
To  the  witness  he  was  pathetic,  but  to  himself  he  could 
only  have  been  interesting,  as  the  figure  of  a  man  sur 
viving,  in  an  alien  but  not  unfriendly  present,  the  past 
which  held  so  vast  a  part  of  all  that  had  constituted 
him.  If  he  had  thought  of  himself  in  this  way,  it 
would  have  been  without  one  emotion  of  self-pity,  such 

162 


as  more  maudlin  souls  indulge,  but  with  a  love  of 
knowledge  and.  wisdom  as  keenly  alert  as  in  his  prime. 
For  three  privileged  years  I  lived  all  but  next-door 
neighbor  of  Doctor  Holmes  in  that  part  of  Beacon 
Street  whither  he  removed  after  he  left  his  old  home  in 
Charles  Street,  and  during  these  years  I  saw  him  rather 
often.     We  were  both  on  the  water  side,  which  means 
so  much  more  than  the  words  say,  and  our  library  win 
dows  commanded  the  same  general  view  of  the  Charles 
rippling  out  into  the  Cambridge  marshes  and  the  sun 
sets,  and  curving  eastward  under  Long  Bridge,  through 
shipping  that  increased  onward  to  the  sea.  He  said  that 
you  could  count  fourteen  towns  and  villages  in  the  com 
pass  of  that  view,  with  the  three  conspicuous  monu 
ments  accenting  the  different  attractions  of  it :  the  tower 
of  Memorial  Hall  at  Harvard;  the  obelisk  on  Bunker 
Hill;   and  in  the  centre  of  the  picture  that  bulk  of 
Tufts  College  which  he  said  he  expected  to  greet  his 
eyes  the  first  thing  when  he  opened  them  in  the  other 
world.     But  the  prospect,  though  generally  the  same, 
had  certain  precious  differences  for  each  of  us,  which  I 
have  no  doubt  he  valued  himself  as  much  upon  as  I 
did.     I  have  a  notion  that  he  fancied  these  were  to  bo 
enjoyed  best  in  his  library  through  two  oval  panes  let 
into  the  bay  there  apart  from  the  windows,  for  he  was 
apt  to  make  you  come  and  look  out  of  them  if  you  got 
to  talking  of  the  view  before  you  left.    In  this  pleasant 
study  he  lived  among  the  books,  which  seemed  to  multi 
ply  from  case  to  case  and  shelf  to  shelf,  and  climb  from 
floor  to  ceiling.     Everything  was  in  exquisite  order, 
and  the  desk  where  he  wrote  was  as  scrupulously  neat 
as  if  the  sloven  disarray  of  most  authors'  desks  were 
impossible  to  him.     He  had  a  number  of  ingenious 
little  contrivances  for  helping  his  work,  which  he  liked 
to  show  you;  for  a  time  a  revolving  book-case  at  the 

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LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

corner  of  his  desk  seemed  to  be  his  pet ;  and  after  that 
came  his  fountain-pen,  which  he  used  with  due  ob 
servance  of  its  fountain  principle,  though  he  was  tol 
erant  of  me  when  I  said  I  always  dipped  mine  in  the 
inkstand ;  it  was  a  merit  in  his  eyes  to  use  a  fountain- 
pen  in  anywise.  After  you  had  gone  over  these  objects 
with  him,  and  perhaps  taken  a  peep  at  something  he 
wras  examining  through  his  microscope,  he  sat  down  at 
one  corner  of  his  hearth,  and  invited  you  to  an  easy- 
chair  at  the  other.  His  talk  was  always  considerate  of 
your  wish  to  be  heard,  but  the  person  who  wished  to 
talk  when  he  could  listen  to  Doctor  Holmes  was  his  own 
victim,  and  always  the  loser.  If  you  were  well  advised 
you  kept  yourself  to  the  question  and  response  which 
manifested  your  interest  in  what  he  was  saying,  and  let 
him  talk  on,  with  his  sweet  smile,  and  that  husky  laugh 
he  broke  softly  into  at  times.  Perhaps  he  was  not  very 
well  when  you  came  in  upon  him ;  then  he  would  name 
his  trouble,  with  a  scientific  zest  and  accuracy,  and  pass 
quickly  to  other  matters.  As  I  have  noted,  he  was 
interested  in  himself  only  on  the  universal  side;  and 
he  liked  to  find  his  peculiarity  in  you  better  than  to 
keep  it  his  own ;  he  suffered  a  visible  disappointment  if 
he  could  not  make  you  think  or  say  you  were  so  and  so 
too.  The  querulous  note  was  not  in  his  most  cheerful 
register;  he  would  not  dwell  upon  a  specialized  grief; 
though  sometimes  I  have  known  him  touch  very  lightly 
and  currently  upon  a  slight  annoyance,  or  disrelish  for 
this  or  that.  As  he  grew  older,  he  must  have  had,  of 
course,  an  old  man's  disposition  to  speak  of  his  infirmi 
ties  ;  but  it  was  fine  to  see  him  catch  himself  up  in  this, 
when  he  became  conscious  of  it,  and  stop  short  with  an 
abrupt  turn  to  something  else.  With  a  real  interest, 
which  he  gave  humorous  excess,  he  would  celebrate 
some  little  ingenious  thing  that  had  fallen  in  his  way, 

164 


and  I  have  heard  him  expatiate  with  childlike  delight 
upon  the  merits  of  a  new  razor  he  had  got:  a  sort  of 
mower,  which  he  could  sweep  recklessly  over  cheek  and 
chin  without  the  least  danger  of  cutting  himself.  The 
last  time  I  saw  him  he  asked  me  if  he  had  ever  shown 
me  that  miraculous  razor ;  and  I  doubt  if  he  quite  liked 
my  saying  I  had  seen  one  of  the  same  kind. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  he  enjoyed  sitting  at  his  chim 
ney-corner  rather  as  the  type  of  a  person  having  a  good 
time  than  as  such  a  person ;  he  would  rather  be  up  and 
about  something,  taking  down  a  book,  making  a  note, 
going  again  to  his  little  windows,  and  asking  you  if  you 
had  seen  the  crowrs  yet  that  sometimes  alighted  on  the 
shoals  left  bare  by  the  ebb-tide  behind  the  house.  The 
reader  will  recall  his  lovely  poem,  "  My  Aviary,"  which 
deals  with  the  winged  life  of  that  pleasant  prospect.  I 
shared  with  him  in  the  flock  of  wild-ducks  which  used 
to  come  into  our  neighbor  waters  in  spring,  when  the 
ice  broke  up,  and  stayed  as  long  as  the  smallest  space 
of  brine  remained  unfrozen  in  the  fall.  He  was  gra 
ciously  willing  I  should  share  in  them,  and  in  the  cloud 
of  gulls  which  drifted  about  in  the  currents  of  the  sea 
and  sky  there,  almost  the  whole  year  round.  I  did  not 
pretend  an  original  right  to  them,  coming  so  late  as  I 
did  to  the  place,  and  I  think  rny  deference  pleased  him. 

VII 

As  I  have  said,  he  liked  his  fences,  or  at  least  liked 
you  to  respect  them,  or  to  be  sensible  of  them.  As  often 
as  I  went  to  see  him  I  was  made  to  wait  in  the  little 
reception-roorn  below,  and  never  shown  at  once  to  his 
study.  My  name  would  be  carried  up,  and  I  would 
hear  him  verifying  my  presence  from  the  maid  through 
the  opened  door ;  then  there  came  a  cheery  cry  of  wel- 

165 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

come :  "  Is  that  you  ?  Come  up,  come  up !"  and  I  found 
him  sometimes  half-way  down  the  stairs  to  meet  me. 
He  would  make  an  excuse  for  having  kept  me  below  a 
moment,  and  say  something  about  the  rule  he  had  to 
observe  in  all  cases,  as  if  he  would  not  have  me  feel  his 
fence  a  personal  thing.  I  was  aware  how  thoroughly 
his  gentle  spirit  pervaded  the  whole  house;  the  Irish 
maid  who  opened  the  door  had  the  effect  of  being  a 
neighbor  too,  and  of  being  in  the  joke  of  the  little 
formality ;  she  apologized  in  her  turn  for  the  reception- 
room;  there  was  certainly  nothing  trampled  upon  in 
her  manner,  but  affection  and  reverence  for  him  whose 
gate  she  guarded,  with  something  like  the  sentiment  she 
would  have  cherished  for  a  dignitary  of  the  Church, 
but  nicely  differenced  and  adjusted  to  the  Autocrat's 
peculiar  merits. 

The  last  time  I  was  in  that  place,  a  visitant  who  had 
lately  knocked  at  my  own  door  was  about  to  enter.  I 
met  the  master  of  the  house  on  the  landing  of  the  stairs 
outside  his  study,  and  he  led  me  in  for  the  few  mo 
ments  we  could  spend  together.  He  spoke  of  the 
shadow  so  near,  and  said  he  supposed  there  could  be  no 
hope,  but  he  did  not  refuse  the  cheer  I  offered  him  from 
my  ignorance  against  his  knowledge,  and  at  something 
that  was  thought  or  said  he  smiled,  with  even  a  breath 
of  laughter,  so  potent  is  the  wont  of  a  lifetime,  though 
his  eyes  were  full  of  tears,  and  his  voice  broke  with  his 
words.  Those  who  have  sorrowed  deepest  will  under 
stand  this  best. 

It  was  during  the  few  years  of  our  Beacon  Street 
neighborhood  that  he  spent  those  hundred  days  abroad 
in  his  last  visit  to  England  and  France.  He  was  full 
of  their  delight  when  he  came  back,  and  my  propinquity 
gave  me  the  advantage  of  hearing  him  speak  of  them  at 
first  hand.  He  whimsically  pleased  himself  most  with 

166 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

his  Derby-day  experiences,  and  enjoyed  contrasting 
the  crowd  and  occasion  with  that  of  forty  or  fifty 
years  earlier,  when  he  had  seen  some  famous  race  of 
the  Derby  won;  nothing  else  in  England  seemed  to 
have  moved  him  so  much,  though  all  that  royalties, 
dignities,  and  celebrities  could  well  do  for  him  had 
been  done.  Of  certain  things  that  happened  to  him, 
characteristic  of  the  English,  and  interesting  to  him 
in  their  relation  to  himself  through  his  character 
of  universally  interested  man,  he  spoke  freely;  but 
he  has  said  what  he  chose  to  the  public  about  them, 
and  I  have  no  right  to  say  more.  The  thing  that 
most  vexed  him  during  his  sojourn  apparently  was  to 
have  been  described  in  one  of  the  London  papers  as 
quite  deaf;  and  I  could  truly  say  to  him  that  I  had 
never  imagined  him  at  all  deaf,  or  heard  him  accused  of 
it  before.  "  Oh,  yes,"  he  said,  "  I  am  a  little  hard  of 
hearing  on  one  side.  But  it  isn't  deafness." 

He  had,  indeed,  few  or  none  of  the  infirmities  of  age 
that  make  themselves  painfully  or  inconveniently  evi 
dent.  He  carried  his  slight  figure  erect,  and  until  his 
latest  years  his  step  was  quick  and  sure.  Once  he 
spoke  of  the  lessened  height  of  old  people,  apropos  of 
something  that  was  said,  and  "  They  will  shrink,  you 
•know,"  he  added,  as  if  he  were  not  at  all  concerned  in 
the  fact  himself.  If  you  met  him  in  the  street,  you 
encountered  a  spare,  carefully  dressed  old  gentleman, 
with  a  clean-shaven  face  and  a  friendly  smile,  qualified 
by  the  involuntary  frown  of  his  thick,  senile  brows; 
well  coated,  lustrously  shod,  well  gloved,  in  a  silk  hat, 
latterly  wound  with  a  mourning-weed.  Sometimes  he 
did  not  know  you  when  he  knew  you  quite  well,  and  at 
such  times  I  think  it  was  kind  to  spare  his  years  the 
fatigue  of  recalling  your  identity;  at  any  rate,  I  am 
glad  of  the  times  when  I  did  so.  In  society  he  had  the 

167 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

same  vagueness,  the  same  dimness;  but  after  the  mo 
ment  he  needed  to  make  sure  of  you,  he  was  as  vivid 
as  ever  in  his  life.  He  made  me  think  of  a  bed  of 
embers  on  which  the  ashes  have  thinly  gathered,  and 
which,  when  these  are  breathed  away,  sparkles  and 
tinkles  keenly  up  with  all  the  freshness  of  a  newly 
kindled  fire.  He  did  not  mind  talking  about  his  age, 
and  I  fancied  rather  enjoyed  doing  so.  Its  approaches 
interested  him ;  if  he  was  going,  he  liked  to  know  just 
how  and  when  he  was  going.  Once  he  spoke  of  his 
lasting  strength  in  terms  of  imaginative  humor:  he 
was  still  so  intensely  interested  in  nature,  the  universe, 
that  it  seemed  to  him  he  was  not  like  an  old  man  so 
much  as  a  lusty  infant  which  struggles  against  having 
the  breast  snatched  from  it.  He  laughed  at  the  notion 
of  this,  with  that  impersonal  relish  which  seemed  to  me 
singularly  characteristic  of  the  self-consciousness  so 
marked  in  him.  I  never  heard  one  lugubrious  word 
from  him  in  regard  to  his  years.  He  liked  your  sym 
pathy  on  all  grounds  where  he  could  have  it  self-re- 
spectf  ully,  but  he  was  a  most  manly  spirit,  and  he  would 
not  have  had  it  even  as  a  type  of  the  universal  decay. 
Possibly  he  would  have  been  interested  to  have  you 
share  in  that  analysis  of  himself  which  he  was  always 
making,  if  such  a  thing  could  have  been. 

He  had  not  much  patience  with  the  unmanly  craving 
for  sympathy  in  others,  and  chiefly  in  our  literary  craft, 
which  is  somewhat  ignobly  given  to  it,  though  he  was 
patient,  after  all.  He  used  to  say,  and  I  believe  he  has 
said  it  in  print,  that  unless  a  man  could  show  a  good 
reason  for  writing  verse,  it  was  rather  against  him,  and 
a  proof  of  weakness.  I  suppose  this  severe  conclusion 
was  something  he  had  reached  after  dealing  with  in 
numerable  small  poets  who  sought  the  light  in  him  with 
verses  that  no  editor  would  admit  to  print.  Yet  of  mor- 

168 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES 

bidness  he  was  often  very  tender;  he  knew  it  to  be 
disease,  something  that  must  be  scientifically  rather 
than  ethically  treated.  He  was  in  the  same  degree  kind 
to  any  sensitiveness,  for  he  was  himself  as  sensitive  as 
he  was  manly,  and  he  was  most  delicately  sensitive  to 
any  rightful  social  claim  upon  him.  I  was  once  at  a 
dinner  with  him,  where  he  was  in  some  sort  my  host,  in 
a  company  of  people  whom  he  had  not  seen  me  with 
before,  and  he  made  a  point  of  acquainting  me  with 
each  of  them.  It  did  not  matter  that  I  knew  most  of 
them  already;  the  proof  of  his  thoughtfulness  was 
precious,  and  I  was  sorry  when  I  had  to  disappoint  it 
by  confessing  a  previous  knowledge. 

VIII 

I  had  three  memorable  meetings  with  him  not  very 
long  before  he  died :  one  a  year  before,  and  the  other  two 
within  a  few  months  of  the  end.  The  first  of  these  was 
at  luncheon  in  the  summer-house  of  a  friend  whose 
hospitality  made  it  summer  the  year  round,  and  we  all 
went  out  to  meet  him,  when  he  drove  up  in  his  open  car 
riage,  with  the  little  sunshade  in  his  hand,  which  he 
took  with  him  for  protection  against  the  heat,  and  also, 
a  little,  I  think,  for  the  whim  of  it.  He  sat  a  moment 
after  he  arrived,  as  if  to  orient  himself  in  respect  to 
each  of  us.  Beside  the  gifted  hostess,  there  was  the 
most  charming  of  all  the  American  essayists,  and  the 
Autocrat  seemed  at  once  to  find  himself  singularly  at 
home  with  the  people  who  greeted  him.  There  was  no 
interval  needed  for  fanning  away  the  ashes ;  he  tinkled 
up  before  he  entered  the  house,  and  at  the  table  he  was 
as  vivid  and  scintillant  as  I  ever  saw  him,  if  indeed  I 
ever  saw  him  as  much  so.  The  talk  began  at  once,  and 
we  had  made  him  believe  that  there  was  nothing  ego- 

109 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

tistic  in  his  taking  the  word,  or  turning  it  in  illustration 
from  himself  upon  universal  matters.  I  spoke  among 
other  things  of  some  humble  ruins  on  the  road  to 
Gloucester,  which  gave  the  way-side  a  very  aged  look; 
the  tumbled  foundation-stones  of  poor  bits  of  houses, 
and  "  Ah,"  he  said,  "  the  cellar  and  the  well  ?"  He 
added,  to  the  company  generally,  "  Do  you  know  what 
I  think  are  the  two  lines  of  mine  that  go  as  deep  as  any 
others,  in  a  certain  direction  ?"  and  he  began  to  repeat 
stragglingly  certain  verses  from  one  of  his  earlier 
poems,  until  he  came  to  the  closing  couplet.  But  I  will 
give  them  in  full,  because  in  going  to  look  them  up  I 
have  found  them  so  lovely,  and  because  I  can  hear  his 
voice  again  in  every  fondly  accented  syllable : 

'•'  Who  sees  unmoved,  a  ruin  at  his  feet, 
The  lowliest  home  where  human  hearts  have  beat? 
Its  hearth-stone,  shaded  with  the  bistre  stain, 
A  century's  showery  torrents  wash  in  vain; 
Its  starving  orchard  where  the  thistle  blows, 
And  mossy  trunks  still  mark  the  broken  rows; 
Its  chimney-loving  poplar,  oftenest  seen 
Next  an  old  roof,  or  where  a  roof  has  been; 
Its   knot-grass,   plantain, — all    the   social   weeds, 
Man's  mute  companions  following  where  he  leads; 
Its  dwarfed  pale  flowers,  that  show  their  straggling 

heads, 

Sown  by  the  wind  from  grass-choked  garden-beds; 
Its  woodbine  creeping  where  it  used  to  climb; 
Its  roses  breathing  of  the  olden  time; 
All  the  poor  shows  the  curious  idler  sees, 
As  life's   thin  shadows  waste  by  slow  degrees, 
Till  naught  remains,  the  saddening  talc  to  tell, 
Save  home's  last  wrecks — the  cellar  and  the  well!" 

The  poet's  chanting  voice  rose  with  a  triumphant 
swell  in  the  climax,  and  "  There,"  he  said,  "  isn't  it  so  ? 
The  cellar  and  the  well — they  can't  be  thrown  down  or 
burnt  up ;  they  are  the  human  monuments  that  last 
longest  and  defy  decay."  He  rejoiced  openly  in  the 

170 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES 

sympathy  that  recognized  with  him  the  divination  of  a 
most  pathetic,  most  signal  fact,  and  he  repeated  the 
last  couplet  again  at  our  entreaty,  glad  to  be  entreated 
for  it.  I  do  not  know  whether  all  will  agree  with  him 
concerning  the  relative  importance  of  the  lines,  but  I 
think  all  must  feel  the  exquisite  beauty  of  the  picture  to 
which  they  give  the  final  touch. 

He  said  a  thousand  witty  and  brilliant  things  that 
day,  but  his  pleasure  in  this  gave  me  the  most  pleasure, 
and  I  recall  the  passage  distinctly  out  of  the  dimness 
that  covers  the  rest.  He  chose  to  figure  us  younger 
men,  in  touching  upon  the  literary  circumstance  of  the 
past  and  present,  as  representative  of  modern  feeling 
and  thinking,  and  himself  as  no  longer  contemporary. 
We  knew  he  did  this  to  be  contradicted,  and  we  pro 
tested,  affectionately,  fervently,  with  all  our  hearts  and 
minds;  and  indeed  there  were  none  of  his  generation 
who  had  lived  more  widely  into  ours.  He  was  not  a 
prophet  like  Emerson,  nor  ever  a  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness  like  Whittier  or  Lowell.  His  note  was 
heard  rather  amid  the  sweet  security  of  streets,  but  it 
was  always  for  a  finer  and  gentler  civility.  He  imag 
ined  no  new  rule  of  life,  and  no  philosophy  or  theory  of 
life  will  be  known  by  his  name.  He  was  not  con 
structive;  he  was  essentially  observant,  and  in  this  he 
showed  the  scientific  nature.  He  made  his  reader 
known  to  himself,  first  in  the  little,  and  then  in  the 
larger  things.  From  first  to  last  he  was  a  censor,  but 
a  most  winning  and  delightful  censor,  who  could  make 
us  feel  that  our  faults  were  other  people's,  and  who  was 
not  wont 

"  To  bait  his  homilies  with  his  brother  worms." 

At  one  period  he  sat  in  the  seat  of  the  scorner,  as  far 
as  Reform  was  concerned,  or  perhaps  reformers,  who 

171 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

are  so  often  tedious  and  ridiculous ;  but  lie  seemed  to 
get  a  new  heart  with  the  new  mind  which  came  to  him 
when  he  began  to  write  the  Autocrat  papers,  and  the 
light  mocker  of  former  days  became  the  serious  and 
compassionate  thinker,  to  whom  most  truly  nothing 
that  was  human  was  alien.  His  readers  trusted  and 
.loved  him;  few  men  have  ever  written  so  intimately 
with  so  much  dignity,  and  perhaps  none  has  so  en 
deared  himself  by  saying  just  the  thing  for  his  reader 
that  his  reader  could  not  say  for  himself.  He  sought 
the  universal  through  himself  in  others,  and  he  found 
to  his  delight  and  theirs  that  the  most  universal  thing 
was  often,  if  not  always,  the  most  personal  thing. 

In  my  later  meetings  with  him  I  was  struck  more 
and  more  by  his  gentleness.  I  believe  that  men  are  apt 
to  grow  gentler  as  they  grow  older,  unless  they  are  of 
the  curmudgeon  type,  which  rusts  and  crusts  with  age, 
but  with  Doctor  Holmes  the  gentleness  was  peculiarly 
marked.  He  seemed  to  shrink  from  all  things  that 
could  provoke  controversy,  or  even  difference;  ho 
waived  what  might  be  a  matter  of  dispute,  and  rather 
sought  the  things  that  he  could  agree  with  you  upon. 
In  the  "last  talk  I  had  with  him  he  appeared  to  have 
no  grudge  left,  except  for  the  puritanic  orthodoxy  in 
which  he  had  been  bred  as  a  child.  This  he  was  not 
able  to  forgive,  though  its  tradition  was  interwoven 
with  what  was  tenderest  and  dearest  in  his  recollections 
of  childhood.  We  spoke  of  puritanism,  and  I  said  I 
sometimes  wondered  what  could  be  the  mind  of  a  man 
towards  life  who  had  not  been  reared  in  its  awful 
shadow,  say  an  English  Churchman,  or  a  Continental 
Catholic;  and  he  said  he  could  not  imagine,  and  that 
he  did  not  believe  such  a  man  could  at  all  enter  into 
our  feelings ;  puritanism,  he  seemed  to  think,  made  an 
essential  and  ineradicable  difference.  I  do  not  believe 

172 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

lie  had  any  of  that  false  sentiment  which  attributes  vir 
tue  of  character  to  severity  of  creed,  while  it  owns  the 
creed  to  be  wrong. 

He  differed  from  Longfellow  in  often  speaking  of  his 
contemporaries.  lie  spoke  of  them  frankly,  but  with 
an  appreciative  rather  than  a  censorious  criticism.  Of 
Longfellow  himself  he  said  that  day,  when  I  told  him 
I  had  been  writing  about  him,  and  he  seemed  to  me 
a  man  without  error,  that  he  could  think  of  but  one 
error  in  him,  and  that  was  an  error  of  taste,  of  al 
most  merely  literary  taste.  It  was  at  an  earlier  time 
that  he  talked  of  Lowell,  after  his  death,  and  told  me 
that  Lowell  once  in  the  fever  of  his  antislavery  apos- 
tolate  had  written  him,  urging  him  strongly,  as  a  matter 
of  duty,  to  come  out  for  the  cause  he  had  himself  so 
much  at  heart.  Afterwards  Lowell  wrote  again,  own 
ing  himself  wrong  in  his  appeal,  which  he  had  come  to 
recognize  as  invasive.  "  He  was  ten  years  younger 
than  I,"  said  the  doctor. 

I  found  him  that  day  I  speak  of  in  his  house  at  Bev 
erly  Farms,  where  he  had  a  pleasant  study  in  a  corner 
by  the  porch,  and  he  met  me  with  all  the  cheeriness  of 
old.  But  he  confessed  that  he  had  been  greatly  broken 
up  by  the  labor  of  preparing  something  that  might  be 
read  at  some  commemorative  meeting,  and  had  suffered 
from  finding  first  that  he  could  not  write  something 
specially  for  it.  Even  the  copying  and  adapting  an  old 
poem  had  overtaxed  him,  and  in  this  he  showed  the 
failing  powers  of  age.  But  otherwise  he  was  still 
young,  intellectually;  that  is,  there  was  no  failure  of 
interest  in  intellectual  things,  especially  literary  things. 
Some  new  book  lay  on  the  table  at  his  elbow,  and  he 
asked  me  if  I  had  seen  it,  and  made  some  joke  about  his 
having  had  the  good  luck  to  read  it,  and  have  it  lying 
by  him  a  few  days  before  when  the  author  called.  I  do 

173 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

not  know  whether  he  schooled  himself  against  an  old 
man's  tendency  to  revert  to  the  past  or  not,  but  I  know 
that  he  seldom  did  so.  That  morning,  however,  he 
made  several  excursions  into  it,  and  told  me  that  his 
youthful  satire  of  the  Spectre  Pig  had  been  provoked 
by  a  poem  of  the  elder  Dana's,  where  a  phantom 
horse  had  been  seriously  employed,  with  an  effect  of 
anticlimax  which  he  had  found  irresistible.  Another 
foray  was  to  recall  the  oppression  and  depression  of  his 
early  religious  associations,  and  to  speak  with  moving 
tenderness  of  his  father,  whose  hard  doctrine  as  a  min 
ister  was  without  effect  upon  his  own  kindly  nature. 

In  a  letter  written  to  me  a  few  weeks  after  this  time, 
upon  an  occasion  when  he  divined  that  some  word  from 
him  would  be  more  than  commonly  dear,  he  recurred  to 
the  feeling  he  then  expressed :  "  Fifty-six  years  ago — 
more  than  half  a  century — I  lost  my  own  father,  his  age 
being  seventy-three  years.  As  I  have  reached  that  peri 
od  of  life,  passed  it,  and  now  left  it  far  behind,  my 
recollections  seem  to  brighten  and  bring  back  my  boy 
hood  and  early  manhood  in  a  clearer  and  fairer  light 
than  it  came  to  me  in  my  middle  decades.  I  have  often 
wished  of  late  years  that  I  could  tell  him  how  I 
cherished  his  memory;  perhaps  I  may  have  the  happi 
ness  of  saying  all  I  long  to  tell  him  on  the  other  side  of 
that  thin  partition  which  I  love  to  think  is  all  that  di 
vides  us." 

Men  are  never  long  together  without  speaking  of 
women,  and  I  said  how  inevitably  men's  lives  ended 
where  they  began,  in  the  keeping  of  women,  and  their 
strength  failed  at  last  and  surrendered  itself  to  their 
care.  I  had  not  finished  before  I  was  made  to  feel  that 
I  was  poaching,  and  "  Yes,"  said  the  owner  of  the  pre 
serve,  "  I  have  spoken  of  that,"  and  he  went  on  to  tell 
me  just  where.  He  was  not  going  to  have  me  suppose 

174 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

I  had  invented  those  notions,  and  I  could  not  do  less 
than  own  that  I  must  have  found  them  in  his  book,  and 
forgotten  it. 

He  spoke  of  his  pleasant  summer  life  in  the  air,  at 
once  soft  and  fresh,  of  that  lovely  coast,  and  of  his 
drives  up  and  down  the  country  roads.  Sometimes  this 
lady  and  sometimes  that  came  for  him,  and  one  or  two 
habitually,  but  he  always  had  his  own  carriage  ordered 
if  they  failed,  that  he  might  not  fail  of  his  drive  in  any 
fair  weather.  His  cottage  was  not  immediately  on  the 
sea,  but  in  full  sight  of  it,  and  there  was  a  sense  of  the 
sea  about  it,  as  there  is  in  all  that  incomparable  region, 
and  I  do  not  think  he  could  have  been  at  home  anywhere 
beyond  the  reach  of  its  salt  breath. 

I  was  anxious  not  to  outstay  his  strength,  and  I  kept 
my  eye  on  the  clock  in  frequent  glances.  I  saw  that  he 
followed  me  in  one  of  these,  and  I  said  that  I  knew 
what  his  hours  were,  and  I  was  watching  so  that  I 
might  go  away  in  time,  and  then  he  sweetly  protested. 
Did  I  like  that  chair  I  was  sitting  in?  It  was  a  gift 
to  him,  and  he  said  who  gave  it,  with  a  pleasure  in  the 
fact  that  was  very  charming,  as  if  he  liked  the  associa 
tion  of  the  thing  with  his  friend.  He  was  disposed  to 
excuse  the  formal  look  of  his  bookcases,  which  were 
filled  with  sets,  and  presented  some  phalanxes  of  fiction 
in  rather  severe  array. 

When  I  rose  to  go,  he  was  concerned  about  my  being 
able  to  find  my  way  readily  to  the  station,  and  he  told 
me  how  to  go,  and  what  turns  to  take,  as  if  he  liked 
realizing  the  way  to  himself.  I  believe  he  did  not  walk 
much  of  late  years,  and  I  fancy  he  found  much  the 
same  pleasure  in  letting  his  imagination  make  this  ex 
cursion  to  the  station  with  me  that  he  would  have  found 
in  actually  going. 

I  saw  him  once  irore,  but  only  once,  when  a  day  or 
175 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

two  later  he  drove  up  by  our  hotel  in  Magnolia  towards 
the  cottage  -where  his  secretary  was  lodging.  He  saw 
us  from  his  carriage,  and  called  us  gayly  to  him,  to 
make  us  rejoice  with  him  at  having  finally  got  that  com 
memorative  poem  off  his  mind.  He  made  a  jest  of  the 
trouble  it  had  cost  him,  even  some  sleeplessness,  and 
said  he  felt  now  like  a  convalescent.  He  was  all  bright 
ness,  and  friendliness,  and  eagerness  to  make  us  feel 
his  mood,  through  what  was  common  to  us  all;  and  I 
am  glad  that  this  last  impression  of  him  is  so  one  with 
the  first  I  ever  had,  and  with  that  which  every  reader 
receives  from  his  work. 

That  is  bright,  and  friendly  and  eager  too,  for  it  is 
throughout  the  very  expression  of  himself.  I  think  it 
is  a  pity  if  an  author  disappoints  even  the  unreasonable 
expectation  of  the  reader,  whom  his  art  has  invited  to 
love  him ;  but  I  do  not  believe  that  Doctor  Holmes  could 
inflict  this  disappointment.  Certainly  he  could  disap 
point  no  reasonable  expectation,  no  intelligent  expecta 
tion.  What  he  wrote,  that  he  was,  and  every  one  felt 
this  who  met  him.  He  has  therefore  not  died,  as  some 
men  die,  the  remote  impersonal  sort,  but  he  is  yet  thrill- 
ingly  alive  in  every  page  of  his  books.  The  quantity 
of  his  literature  is  not  great,  but  the  quality  is  very 
surprising,  and  surprising  first  of  all  as  equality.  From 
the  beginning  to  the  end  he  wrote  one  man,  of  course  in 
his  successive  consciousnesses.  Perhaps  every  one  does 
this,  but  his  work  gives  the  impression  of  an  uncommon 
continuity,  in  spite  of  its  being  the  effect  of  a  later  and 
an  earlier  impulse  so  very  marked  as  to  have  made  the 
later  an  astonishing  revelation  to  those  who  thought 
they  knew  him. 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 


IX 

It  is  not  for  mo  in  such  a  paper  as  this  to  attempt  any 
judgment  of  his  work.  I  have  loved  it,  as  I  loved  him, 
with  a  sense  of  its  limitations  which  is  by  no  means  a 
censure  of  its  excellences.  He  was  not  a  man  who 
cared  to  transcend ;  he  liked  bounds,  he  liked  horizons, 
the  constancy  of  shores.  If  he  put  to  sea,  he  kept  in 
sight  of  land,  like  the  ancient  navigators.  He  did  not 
discover  new  continents ;  and  I  will  own  that  I,  for  my 
part,  should  not  have  liked  to  sail  with  Columbus.  I 
think  one  can  safely  affirm  that  as  great  and  as  useful 
men  stayed  behind,  and  found  an  America  of  the  mind 
without  stirring  from  their  thresholds. 


pan  Sfjtb 
THE  WHITE  MR.   LONGFELLOW 

WE  bad  expected  to  stay  in  Boston  only  until  wo 
could  find  a  house  in  Old  Cambridge.  This 
was  not  so  simple  a  matter  as  it  might  seem;  for  the 
ancient  town  had  not  yet  quickened  its  scholarly  pace 
to  the  modern  step.  Indeed,  in  the  spring  of  1866  the 
impulse  of  expansion  was  not  yet  visibly  felt  any 
where  ;  the  enormous  material  growth  that  followed  the 
civil  war  had  not  yet  begun.  In  Cambridge  the  houses 
to  be  let  were  few,  and  such  as  there  were  fell  either  be 
low  our  pride  or  rose  above  our  purse.  I  wish  I  might 
tell  how  at  last  we  bought  a  house ;  we  had  no  money,  but 
we  were  rich  in  friends,  who  are  still  alive  to  shrink 
from  the  story  of  their  constant  faith  in  a  financial  fut 
ure  which  we  sometimes  doubted,  and  who  backed  their 
credulity  with  their  credit.  It  is  sufficient  for  the  pres 
ent  record,  which  professes  to  be  strictly  literary,  to 
notify  the  fact  that  on  the  first  day  of  May,  1866,  we 
went  out  to  Cambridge  and  began  to  live  in  a  house 
which  we  owned  in  fee  if  not  in  deed,  and  which  was 
none  the  less  valuable  for  being  covered  with  mort 
gages.  Physically,  it  was  a  carpenter's  box,  of  a  sort 
which  is  readily  imagined  by  the  Anglo-American  gen 
ius  for  ugliness,  but  which  it  is  not  so  easy  to  impart  a 
just  conception  of.  A  trim  hedge  of  arbor-vitso  tried  to 
hide  it  from  the  world  in  front,  and  a  tall  board  fence 
behind;  the  little  lot  was  well  planted  (perhaps  too 

178 


THE   WHITE  ME.  LONGFELLOW 

well  planted)  with  pears,  grapes,  and  currants,  and 
there  was  a  small  open  space  which  I  lost  no  time  in 
digging  up  for  a  kitchen-garden.  On  one  side  of  us 
were  the  open  fields ;  on  the  other  a  brief  line  of  neigh 
bor-houses;  across  the  street  before  us  was  a  grove  of 
stately  oaks,  which  I  never  could  persuade  Aldrich  had 
painted  leaves  on  them  in  the  fall.  We  were  really  in  a 
poor  suburb  of  a  suburb ;  but  such  is  the  fascination  of 
ownership,  even  the  ownership  of  a  fully  mortgaged 
property,  that  we  calculated  the  latitude  and  longitude 
of  the  whole  earth  from  the  spot  we  called  ours.  In  our 
walks  about  Cambridge  we  saw  other  places  where  we 
might  have  been  willing  to  live;  only,  we  said,  they 
were  too  far  off.  We  even  prized  the  architecture  of 
our  little  box,  though  we  had  but  so  lately  lived  in  a 
Gothic  palace  on  the  Grand  Canal  in  Venice,  and  were 
not  uncritical  of  beauty  in  the  possessions  of  others. 
Positive  beauty  we  could  not  have  honestly  said  we 
thought  our  cottage  had  as  a  whole,  though  we  might 
have  held  out  for  something  of  the  kind  in  the  brackets 
of  turned  wood  under  its  eaves.  But  we  were  richly 
content  with  it ;  and  with  life  in  Cambridge,  as  it  began 
to  open  itself  to  us,  we  were  infinitely  more  than  con 
tent.  This  life,  so  refined,  so  intelligent,  so  gracefully 
simple,  I  do  not  suppose  has  anywhere  else  had  its 
parallel. 

I 

It  was  the  moment  before  the  old  American  customs 
had  been  changed  by  European  influences  among  people 
of  easier  circumstances ;  and  in  Cambridge  society  kept 
what  was  best  of  its  village  traditions,  and  chose  to 
keep  them  in  the  full  knowledge  of  different  things. 
Nearly  every  one  had  been  abroad;  and  nearly  every 
one  had  acquired  the  taste  for  olives  without  losing  a 
13  179 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

relish  for  native  sauces;  through  the  intellectual  life 
there  was  an  entire  democracy,  and  I  do  not  believe 
that  since  the  capitalistic  era  began  there  was  ever  a 
community  in  which  money  counted  for  less.  There 
was  little  show  of  what  money  could  buy;  I  remember 
but  one  private  carriage  (naturally,  a  publisher's)  ;  and 
there  was  not  one  livery,  except  a  livery  in  the  larger 
sense  kept  by  the  stableman  Pike,  who  made  us  pay 
now  a  quarter  and  now  a  half  dollar  for  a  seat  in  his 
carriages,  according  as  he  lost  or  gathered  courage  for 
the  charge.  We  thought  him  extortionate,  and  we  most 
ly  walked  through  snow  and  mud  of  amazing  depth  and 
thickness. 

The  reader  will  imagine  how  acceptable  this  circum 
stance  was  to  a  young  literary  man  beginning  life  with 
a  fully  mortgaged  house  and  a  salary  of  untried  elas 
ticity.  If  there  were  distinctions  made  in  Cambridge 
they  were  not  against  literature,  and  we  found  our 
selves  in  the  midst  of  a  charming  society,  indifferent, 
apparently,  to  all  questions  but  those  of  the  higher 
education  which  comes  so  largely  by  nature.  That  is  to 
say,  in  the  Cambridge  of  that  day  (and,  I  dare  say,  of 
this)  a  mind  cultivated  in  some  sort  was  essential,  and 
after  that  came  civil  manners,  and  the  willingness  and 
ability  to  bo  agreeable  and  interesting;  but  the  ques 
tion  of  riches  or  poverty  did  not  enter.  Even  the  ques 
tion  of  family,  which  is  of  so  great  concern  in  New 
England,  was  in  abeyance.  Perhaps  it  was  taken  for 
granted  that  every  one  in  Old  Cambridge  society  must 
be  of  good  family,  or  he  could  not  be  there ;  perhaps  his 
mere  residence  tacitly  ennobled  him;  certainly  his  ac 
ceptance  was  an  informal  patent  of  gentility.  To  my 
mind,  the  structure  of  society  was  almost  ideal,  and 
until  we  have  a  perfectly  socialized  condition  of  things 
I  do  not  believe  we  shall  ever  have  a  more  perfect  soci- 

180 


THE  WHITE  ME.  LONGFELLOW 

ety.  The  instincts  which  governed  it  were  not  such  as 
can  arise  from  the  sordid  competition  of  interests ;  they 
flowed  from  a  devotion  to  letters,  and  from  a  self-sacri 
fice  in  material  things  which  I  can  give  no  better  no 
tion  of  than  by  saying  that  the  outlay  of  the  richest 
college  magnate  seemed  to  be  graduated  to  the  income  of 
'the  poorest. 

In  those  days,  the  men  whose  names  have  given 
splendor  to  Cambridge  were  still  living  there.  I  shall 
forget  some  of  them  in  the  alphabetical  enumeration  of 
Louis  Agassiz,  Francis  J.  Child,  Eichard  Henry  Dana, 
Jun.,  John  Fiske,  Dr.  Asa  Gray,  the  family  of  the 
Jameses,  father  and  sons,  Lowell,  Longfellow,  Charles 
Eliot  ^Norton,  Dr.  John  G.  Palfrey,  James  Pierce,  Dr. 
Peabody,  Professor  Parsons,  Professor  Sophocles.  The 
variety  of  talents  and  of  achievements  was  indeed  so 
great  that  Mr.  Bret  Harte,  when  fresh  from  his  Pacific 
slope,  justly  said,  after  listening  to  a  partial  rehearsal 
of  them,  "  Why,  you  couldn't  fire  a  revolver  from  your 
front  porch  anywhere  without  bringing  down  a  two- 
volumer  !"  Everybody  had  written  a  book,  or  an  article, 
or  a  poem ;  or  was  in  the  process  or  expectation  of  doing 
it,  and  doubtless  those  whose  names  escape  me  will 
have  greater  difficulty  in  eluding  fame.  These  kindly, 
these  gifted  folk  each  came  to  see  us  and  to  make  us  at 
home  among  them;  and  my  home  is  still  among  them, 
on  this  side  and  on  that  side  of  the  line  between  the 
living  and  the  dead  which  invisibly  passes  through  all 
the  streets  of  the  cities  of  men. 


11 


We  had  the  whole  summer  for  the  exploration  of 
Cambridge  before  society  returned  from  the  mountains 
and  the  sea-shore,  and  it  was  not  till  October  that  I  saw 

181 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Longfellow.  I  heard  again,  as  I  heard  when  I  first 
came  to  Boston,  that  he  was  at  Nahant,  and  though 
Nahant  was  no  longer  so  far  away,  now,  as  it  was  then, 
I  did  not  think  of  seeking  him  out  even  when  we  went 
for  a  day  to  explore  that  coast  during  the  summer.  It 
seems  strange  that  I  cannot  recall  just  when  and  where 
I  saw  him,  but  early  after  his  return  to  Cambridge  I 
had  a  message  from  him  asking  me  to  come  to  a  meet 
ing  of  the  Dante  Club  at  Craigie  House. 

Longfellow  was  that  winter  (1866-7)  revising  his 
translation  of  the  Paradiso,  and  the  Dante  Club  was  the 
circle  of  Italianate  friends  and  scholars  whom  he  in 
vited  to  follow  him  and  criticise  his  work  from  the 
original,  while  he  read  his  version  aloud.  Those  who 
were  most  constantly  present  were  Lowell  and  Professor 
Norton,  but  from  time  to  time  others  came  in,  and  wre 
seldom  sat  down  at  the  nine-o'clock  supper  that  fol 
lowed  the  reading  of  the  canto  in  less  number  than  ten 
or  twelve. 

The  criticism,  especially  from  the  accomplished 
Danteists  I  have  named,  was  frank  and  frequent.  I  be 
lieve  they  neither  of  them  quite  agreed  with  Longfellow 
as  to  the  form  of  version  he  had  chosen,  but,  waiving 
that,  the  question  was  how  perfectly  he  had  done  his 
work  upon  the  given  lines.  I  myself,  with  whatever 
right,  great  or  little,  I  may  have  to  an  opinion,  believe 
thoroughly  in  Longfellow's  plan.  When  I  read  his 
version  my  sense  aches  for  the  rhyme  which  he  rejected, 
but  my  admiration  for  his  fidelity  to  Dante  otherwise 
is  immeasurable.  I  remember  with  equal  admiration 
the  subtle  and  sympathetic  scholarship  of  his  critics, 
who  scrutinized  every  shade  of  meaning  in  a  word  or 
phrase  that  gave  them  pause,  and  did  not  let  it  pass 
till  all  the  reasons  and  facts  had  been  considered.  Some 
times,  and  even  often,  Longfellow  yielded  to  their  cen- 

182 


THE   WHITE  ME.  LONGFELLOW 

sure,  but  for  the  most  part,  when  he  was  of  another 
mind,  he  held  to  his  mind,  and  the  passage  had  to  go  as 
he  said.  I  make  a  little  haste  to  say  that  in  all  the  meet 
ings  of  the  Club,  during  a  whole  winter  of  Wednesday 
evenings,  I  myself,  though  I  faithfully  followed  in  an 
Italian  Dante  with  the  rest,  ventured  upon  one  sug 
gestion  only.  This  was  kindly,  even  seriously,  con 
sidered  by  the  poet,  and  gently  rejected.  lie  could  not 
do  anything  otherwise  than  gently,  and  I  was  not  suf 
fered  to  feel  that  I  had  done  a  presumptuous  thing.  I 
can  see  him  now,  as  he  looked  up  from  the  proof-sheets 
on  the  round  table  before  him,  and  over  at  me,  growing 
consciously  smaller  and  smaller,  like  something  through 
a  reversed  opera-glass.  lie  had  a  shaded  drop-light  in 
front  of  him,  and  in  its  glow  his  beautiful  and  benignly 
noble  head  had  a  dignity  peculiar  to  him. 

All  the  portraits  of  Longfellow  are  likenesses  more 
or  less  bad  and  good,  for  there  was  something  as  simple 
in  the  physiognomy  as  in  the  nature  of  the  man.  His 
head,  after  he  allowed  his  beard  to  grow  and  wore  his 
hair  long  in  the  manner  of  elderly  men,  was  leonine, 
but  mildly  leonine,  as  the  old  painters  conceived  the 
lion  of  St.  Mark.  Once  Sophocles,  the  ex-monk  of 
Mount  Atlios,  so  long  a  Greek  professor  at  Harvard, 
came  in  for  supper,  after  the  reading  was  over,  and  he 
was  leonine  too,  but  of  a  fierceness  that  contrasted  finely 
with  Longfellow's  mildness.  I  remember  the  poet's 
asking  him  something  about  the  punishment  of  im 
paling,  in  Turkey,  and  his  answering,  with  an  ironical 
gleam  of  his  fiery  eyes,  "  Unhappily,  it  is  obsolete."  I 
dare  say  he  was  not  so  leonine,  either,  as  he  looked. 

When  Longfellow  read  verse,  it  was  with  a  hollow, 
with  a  mellow  resonant  murmur,  like  the  note  of  some 
deep-throated  horn.  His  voice  was  very  lulling  in 
quality,  and  at  the  Dante  Club  it  used  to  have  early 

183 


LITEEAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

effect  with  an  old  scholar  who  sat  in  a  cavernous  arm 
chair  at  the  corner  of  the  fire,  and  who  drowsed  audibly 
in  the  soft  tone  and  the  gentle  heat.  The  poet  had  a 
fat  terrier  who  wished  always  to  be  present  at  the 
meetings  of  the  Club,  and  he  commonly  fell  asleep  at 
the  same  moment  with  that  dear  old  scholar,  so  that 
when  they  began  to  make  themselves  heard  in  concert, 
one  could  not  tell  which  it  was  that  most  took  our 
thoughts  from  the  text  of  the  Paradiso.  When  the  duet 
opened,  Longfellow  would  look  up  with  an  arch  recog 
nition  of  the  fact,  and  then  go  gravely  on  to  the  end  of 
the  canto.  At  the  close  he  would  speak  to  his  friend  and 
lead  him  out  to  supper  as  if  he  had  not  seen  or  heard 
anything  amiss. 

Ill 

In  that  elect  company  I  was  silent,  partly  because  I 
was  conscious  of  my  youthful  inadequacy,  and  partly 
because  I  preferred  to  listen.  But  Longfellow  always 
behaved  as  if  I  were  saying  a  succession  of  edifying 
and  delightful  things,  and  from  time  to  time  he  ad 
dressed  himself  to  me,  so  that  I  should  not  feel  left  out. 
He  did  not  talk  much  himself,  and  I  recall  nothing 
that  he  said.  But  he  always  spoke  both  wisely  and 
simply,  without  the  least  touch  of  pose,  and  with  no 
intention  of  effect,  but  with  something  that  I  must  call 
quality  for  want  of  a  better  word;  so  that  at  a  table 
where  Holmes  sparkled,  and  Lowell  glowed,  and  Agas- 
siz  beamed,  he  cast  the  light  of  a  gentle  gayety,  which 
seemed  to  dim  all  those  vivider  luminaries.  While  he 
spoke  you  did  not  miss  Fields's  story  or  Tom  Apple- 
ton's  wit,  or  even  the  gracious  amity  of  Mr.  Norton, 
with  his  unequalled  intuitions. 

The  supper  was  very  plain :  a  cold  turkey,  which  the 
host  carved,  or  a  haunch  of  venison,  or  some  braces  of 

184 


THE   WHITE   MR.  LONGFELLOW 

grouse,  or  a  platter  of  quails,  with  a  deep  bowl  of  salad, 
and  the  sympathetic  companionship  of  those  elect  vin 
tages  which  Longfellow  loved,  and  which  he  chose  with 
the  inspiration  of  affection.  We  usually  began  with 
oysters,  and  when  some  one  who  was  expected  did  not 
come  promptly,  Longfellow  invited  us  to  raid  his  plate, 
as  a  just  punishment  of  his  delay.  One  evening  Low 
ell  remarked,  with  the  cayenne  poised  above  his  blue- 
points,  "  It's  astonishing  how  fond  these  fellows  are 
of  pepper." 

The  old  friend  of  the  cavernous  arm-chair  was  per 
haps  not  wide  enough  awake  to  repress  an  "  Ah  ?"  of 
deep  interest  in  this  fact  of  natural  history,  and  Lowell 
was  provoked  to  go  on.  "  Yes,  I've  dropped  a  red  pep 
per  pod  into  a  barrel  of  them,  before  now,  and  then 
taken  them  out  in  a  solid  mass,  clinging  to  it  like  a 
swarm  of  bees  to  their  queen." 

"  Is  it  possible  ?"  cried  the  old  friend ;  and  then 
Longfellow  intervened  to  save  him  from  worse,  and 
turned  the  talk. 

I  reproach  myself  that  I  made  no  record  of  the  talk, 
for  I  find  that  only  a  few  fragments  of  it  have  caught  in 
my  memory,  and  that  the  sieve  which  should  have  kept 
the  gold  has  let  it  wash  away  with  the  gravel.  I  re 
member  once  Doctor  Uolmes's  talking  of  the  physician 
as  the  true  seer,  whose  awful  gift  it  was  to  behold  with 
the  fatal  second  sight  of  science  the  shroud  gathering 
to  the  throat  of  many  a  doomed  man  apparently  in  per 
fect  health,  and  happy  in  the  promise  of  unnumbered 
days.  The  thought  may  have  been  suggested  by  some 
of  the  toys  of  superstition  which  intellectual  people  like 
to  play  with. 

I  never  could  be  quite  sure  at  first  that  Longfellow's 
brother-in-law,  Appleton,  was  seriously  a  spiritualist, 
even  when  he  disputed  the  most  strenuously  with  the 

185 


LITEEAEY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

unbelieving  Autocrat.  But  he  really  was  in  earnest 
about  it,  though  he  relished  a  joke  at  the  expense  of  his 
doctrine,  like  some  clerics  when  they  are  in  the  safe 
company  of  other  clerics.  lie  told  me  once  of  having 
recounted  to  Agassiz  the  facts  of  a  very  remarkable 
seance,  where  the  souls  of  the  departed  outdid  them 
selves  in  the  athletics  and  acrobatics  they  seem  so  fond 
of  over  there,  throwing  large  stones  across  the  room, 
moving  pianos,  and  lifting  dinner-tables  and  setting 
them  a-twirl  under  the  chandelier.  "  And  now,"  he  de 
manded,  "  what  do  you  say  to  that  ?"  "  Well,  Mr.  Ap- 
pleton,"  Agassiz  answered,  to  Appleton's  infinite  de 
light,  "  I  say  that  it  did  not  happen." 

One  night  they  began  to  speak  at  the  Dante  supper 
of  the  unhappy  man  whose  crime  is  a  red  stain  in  the 
Cambridge  annals,  and  one  and  another  recalled  their 
impressions  of  Professor  Webster.  It  was  possibly 
with  a  retroactive  sense  that  they  had  all  felt  some 
thing  uncanny  in  him,  but,  apropos  of  the  deep  salad- 
bowl  in  the  centre  of  the  table,  Longfellow  remember 
ed  a  supper  Webster  was  at,  where  he  lighted  some 
chemical  in  such  a  dish  and  held  his  head  over  it,  with 
a  handkerchief  noosed  about  his  throat  and  lifted 
above  it  with  one  hand,  while  his  face,  in  the  pale  light, 
took  on  the  livid  ghastliness  of  that  of  a  man  hanged 
by  the  neck. 

Another  night  the  talk  wandered  to  the  visit  which 
an  English  author  (now  with  God)  paid  America  at 
the  height  of  a  popularity  long  since  toppled  to  the 
ground,  with  many  another.  He  was  in  very  good 
humor  with  our  whole  continent,  and  at  Longfellow's 
table  he  found  the  champagne  even  surprisingly  fine. 
"  But,"  he  said  to  his  host,  who  now  told  the  story,  "  it 
cawn't  be  genuine,  you  know !" 

Many   years   afterwards   this   author   revisited   our 
186 


THE   WHITE  ME.  LONGFELLOW 

shores,  and  I  dined  with  him  at  Longfellow's,  where 
he  was  anxious  to  constitute  himself  a  guest  during 
his  sojourn  in  our  neighborhood.  Longfellow  was 
equally  anxious  that  he  should  not  do  so,  and  he  took 
a  harmless  pleasure  in  outmanoeuvring  him.  He  seized 
a  chance  to  speak  with  me  alone,  and  plotted  to  de 
liver  him  over  to  me  without  apparent  unkindness, 
when  the  latest  horse-car  should  be  going  in  to  Boston, 
and  begged  me  to  walk  him  to  Harvard  Square  and  put 
him  aboard.  "  Put  him  aboard,  and  don't  leave  him 
till  the  car  starts,  and  then  watch  that  he  doesn't  get 
off." 

These  instructions  he  accompanied  with  a  lifting  of 
the  eyebrows,  and  a  pursing  of  the  mouth,  in  an  anx 
iety  not  altogether  burlesque.  He  knew  himself  the 
prey  of  any  one  who  chose  to  batten  on  him,  and  his 
hospitality  was  subject  to  frightful  abuse.  Perhaps 
Mr.  Norton  has  somewhere  told  how,  when  he  asked 
if  a  certain  person  who  had  been  outstaying  his  time 
was  not  a  dreadful  bore,  Longfellow  answered,  with 
angelic  patience,  "Yes;  but  then  you  know  I  have 
been  bored  so  often !" 

There  was  one  fatal  Englishman  whom  I  shared 
with  him  during  the  great  part  of  a  season:  a  poor 
soul,  not  without  gifts,  but  always  ready  for  more, 
especially  if  they  took  the  form  of  meat  and  drink. 
He  had  brought  letters  from  one  of  the  best  English 
men  alive,  who  withdrew  them  too  late  to  save  his 
American  friends  from  the  sad  consequences  of  wel 
coming  him.  So  lie  established  himself  impregnably 
in  a  Boston  club,  and  came  out  every  day  to  dine  with 
Longfellow  in  Cambridge,  beginning  with  his  return 
from  Nahant  in  October  and  continuing  far  into  De 
cember.  That  was  the  year  of  the  great  horse-dis 
temper,  when  the  plague  disabled  the  transportation 

187 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

in  Boston,  and  cut  off  all  intercourse  between  the 
suburb  and  the  city  on  the  street  railways.  "  I  did 
think,"  Longfellow  pathetically  lamented,  "  that  when 
the  horse-cars  stopped  running,  I  should  have  a  little 
respite  from  L.,  but  he  walks  out." 

In  the  midst  of  his  own  suffering  he  was  willing  to 
advise  with  me  concerning  some  poems  L.  had  offered 
to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  after  we  had  desperately 
read  them  together  he  said,  with  inspiration,  "  I  think 
these  things  are  more  adapted  to  music  than  the  mag 
azine,"  and  this  seemed  so  good  a  notion  that  when  L. 
came  to  know  their  fate  from  me,  I  answered,  confi 
dently,  "  I  think  they  are  rather  more  adapted  to  mu 
sic." 

He  calmly  asked,  "  Why  ?"  and  as  this  was  an 
exigency  whicli  Longfellow  had  not  forecast  for  me,  I 
was  caught  in  it  without  hope  of  escape.  I  really  do 
not  know  what  I  said,  but  I  know  that  I  did  not  take 
the  poems,  such  was  my  literary  conscience  in  those 
days;  I  am  afraid  I  should  be  weaker  now. 

IV 

The  suppers  of  the  Dante  Club  were  a  relaxation 
from  the  severity  of  their  toils  on  criticism,  and  I  will 
not  pretend  that  their  table-talk  was  of  that  seriousness 
which  duller  wits  might  have  given  themselves  up  to. 
The  passing  stranger,  especially  if  a  light  or  jovial 
person,  was  always  welcome,  and  I  never  knew  of  the 
enforcement  of  the  rule  I  heard  of,  that  if  you  came 
in  without  question  on  the  Club  nights,  you  were  a 
guest;  but  if  you  rang  or  knocked,  you  could  not  get 
in. 

Any  sort  of  diversion  was  hailed,  and  once  Apple- 
ton  proposed  that  Longfellow  should  show  us  his  wine- 

188 


THE   WHITE   MR.   LONGFELLOW 

cellar.  He  took  up  the  candle  burning  on  the  table 
for  the  cigars,  and  led  the  way  into  the  basement  of  the 
beautiful  old  Colonial  mansion,  doubly  memorable  as 
Washington's  headquarters  while  he  was  in  Cam 
bridge,  and  as  the  home  of  Longfellow  for  so  many 
years.  The  taper  cast  just  the  right  gleams  on  the 
darkness,  bringing  into  relief  the  massive  piers  of 
brick,  and  the  solid  walls  of  stone,  which  gave  the  cel 
lar  the  effect  of  a  casemate  in  some  fortress,  and  leav 
ing  the  corners  and  distances  to  a  romantic  gloom. 
This  basement  was  a  work  of  the  days  when  men  built 
more  heavily  if  not  more  substantially  than  now,  but 
I  forget,  if  I  ever  knew,  what  date  the  wine-cellar  was 
of.  It  was  well  stored  with  precious  vintages,  aptly 
cobwebbed  and  dusty;  but  I  could  not  find  that  it  had 
any  more  charm  than  the  shelves  of  a  library:  it  is  the 
inside  of  bottles  and  of  books  that  makes  its  appeal. 
The  whole  place  witnessed  a  bygone  state  and  luxury, 
which  otherwise  lingered  in  a  dim  legend  or  two. 
Longfellow  once  spoke  of  certain  old  love-letters  which 
dropped  down  on  the  basement  stairs  from  some 
place  overhead ;  and  there  was  the  fable  or  the  fact  of 
a  subterranean  passage  under  the  street  from  Craigie 
House  to  the  old  Batchelder  House,  which  I  relate 
to  these  letters  with  no  authority  I  can  allege.  But  in 
Craigie  House  dwelt  the  proud  fair  lady  who  was 
buried  in  the  Cambridge  church-yard  with  a  slave  at 
her  head  and  a  slave  at  her  feet. 

"Dust  is  in  her  beautiful  eyes," 

and  whether  it  was  they  that  smiled  or  wept  in  their 
time  over  those  love-letters,  I  will  leave  the  reader  to 
say.  The  fortunes  of  her  Tory  family  fell  with  those 
of"  their  party,  and  the  last  Vassal  ended  his  days  a 
prisoner  from  his  creditors  in  his  own  house,  with  a 

189 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

weekly  enlargement  on  Sundays,  when  the  law  could 
not  reach  him.  It  is  known  how  the  place  took  Long 
fellow's  fancy  when  he  first  came  to  be  professor  in 
Harvard,  and  how  he  was  a  lodger  of  the  last  Mistress 
Craigie  there,  long  before  he  became  its  owner.  The 
house  is  square,  with  Longfellow's  study  where  he  read 
and  wrote  on  the  right  of  the  door,  and  a  statelier  li 
brary  behind  it;  on  the  left  is  the  drawing-room,  with 
the  dining-room  in  its  rear ;  from  its  square  hall  climbs 
a  beautiful  stairway  with  twisted  banisters,  and  a  tall 
clock  in  their  angle. 

The  study  where  the  Dante  Club  met,  and  where 
I  mostly  saw  Longfellow,  was  a  plain,  pleasant  room, 
with  broad  panelling  in  white  painted  pine;  in  the 
centre  before  the  fireplace  stood  his  round  table,  laden 
with  books,  papers,  and  proofs;  in  the  farthest  corner 
by  the  window  was  a  high  desk  which  he  sometimes 
stood  at  to  write.  In  this  room  Washington  held  his 
councils  and  transacted  his  business  with  all  comers; 
in  the  chamber  overhead  he  slept.  I  do  not  think 
Longfellow  associated  the  place  much  with  him,  and  I 
never  heard  him  speak  of  Washington  in  relation  to 
it  except  once,  when  he  told  me  with  peculiar  relish 
what  he  called  the  true  version  of  a  pious  story  con 
cerning  the  aide-de-camp  who  blundered  in  upon  him 
while  he  knelt  in  prayer.  The  father  of  his  coun 
try  rose  and  rebuked  the  young  man  severely,  and  then 
resumed  his  devotions.  "  He  rebuked  him,"  said 
Longfellow,  lifting  his  brows  and  making  rings  round 
the  pupils  of  his  eyes,  "  by  throwing  his  scabbard  at 
his  head." 

All  the  front  windows  of  Craigie  House  look 
out  over  the  open  fields  across  the  Charles,  which  is 
now  the  Longfellow  Memorial  Garden.  The  poet  used 
to  be  amused  with  the  popular  superstition  that  he  was 

190 


THE   WHITE  ME.  LONGFELLOW 

holding  this  vacant  ground  with  a  view  to  a  rise  in  the 
price  of  lots,  while  all  he  wanted  was  to  keep  a  feat 
ure  of  his  beloved  landscape  unchanged.  Lofty  elms 
drooped  at  the  corners  of  the  house;  on  the  lawn  bil 
lowed  clumps  of  the  lilac,  which  formed  a  thick  hedge 
along  the  fence.  There  was  a  terrace  part  way  down 
this  lawn,  and  when  a  white-painted  balustrade  was 
set  some  fifteen  years  ago  upon  its  brink,  it  seemed 
always  to  have  been  there.  Long  verandas  stretched 
on  either  side  of  the  mansion ;  and  behind  was  an  old- 
fashioned  garden  with  beds  primly  edged  with  box 
after  a  design  of  the  poet's  own.  Longfellow  had  a 
ghost  story  of  this  quaint  plaisance,  which  he  used  to 
tell  with  an  artful  reserve  of  the  catastrophe.  He  was 
coming  home  one  winter  night,  and  as  he  crossed  the 
garden  he  was  startled  by  a  white  figure  swaying  be 
fore  him.  But  he  knew  that  the  only  way  was  to  ad 
vance  upon  it.  He  pushed  boldly  forward,  and  was 
suddenly  caught  under  the  throat — by  the  clothes-line 
with  a  long  night-gown  on  it. 

Perhaps  it  was  at  the  end  of  a  long  night  of  the 
Dante  Club  that  I  heard  him  tell  this  story.  The  even 
ings  were  sometimes  mornings  before  the  reluctant 
break-up  came,  but  they  were  never  half  long  enough 
for  me.  I  have  given  no  idea  of  the  high  reasoning 
of  vital  things  which  I  must  often  have  heard  at  that 
table,  and  that  I  have  forgotten  it  is  no  proof  that  I 
did  not  hear  it.  The  memory  will  not  be  ruled  as  to 
what  it  shall  bind  and  what  it  shall  loose,  and  I  should 
entreat  mine  in  vain  for  record  of  those  meetings  other 
than  what  I  have  given.  Perhaps  it  would  be  well, 
in  the  interest  of  some  popular  conceptions  of  what  the 
social  intercourse  of  great  wits  must  be,  for  me  to  in 
vent  some  ennobling  and  elevating  passages  of  conver 
sation  at  Longfellow's;  perhaps  I  ought  to  do  it  for 

191 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

the  sake  of  my  own  repute  as  a  serious  and  adequate 
witness.  But  I  am  rather  helpless  in  the  matter;  I 
must  set  down  what  I  remember,  and  surely  if  I  can 
remember  no  phrase  from  Holmes  that  a  reader  could 
live  or  die  by,  it  is  something  to  recall  how,  when 
a  certain  potent  cheese  was  passing,  he  leaned  over  to 
gaze  at  it,  and  asked :  "  Does  it  kick  ?  Does  it  kick  ?" 
No  strain  of  high  poetic  thinking  remains  to  me  from 
Lowell,  but  he  made  me  laugh  unforgettably  with  his 
passive  adventure  one  night  going  home  late,  when  a 
man  suddenly  leaped  from  the  top  of  a  high  fence  upon 
the  sidewalk  at  his  feet,  and  after  giving  him  the  worst 
fright  of  his  life,  disappeared  peaceably  into  the  dark 
ness.  To  be  sure,  there  was  one  most  memorable  sup 
per,  when  he  read  the  "  Bigelow  Paper  "  he  had  fin 
ished  that  day,  and  enriched  the  meaning  of  his  verse 
with  the  beauty  of  his  voice.  There  lingers  yet  in  my 
sense  his  very  tone  in  giving  the  last  line  of  the  passage 
lamenting  the  waste  of  the  heroic  lives  which  in  those 
dark  hours  of  Johnson's  time  seemed  to  have  been 

"  Butchered  to  make  a  blind  man's  holiday." 

The  hush  that  followed  upon  his  ceasing  was  of  that 
finest  quality  which  spoken  praise  always  lacks;  and 
I  suppose  that  I  could  not  give  a  just  notion  of  these 
Dante  Club  evenings  without  imparting  the  effect  of 
such  silences.  This  I  could  not  hopefully  undertake 
to  do;  but  I  am  tempted  to  some  effort  of  the  kind  by 
my  remembrance  of  Longfellow's  old  friend  George 
Washington  Greene,  who  often  came  up  from  his  home 
in  Rhode  Island,  to  be  at  those  sessions,  and  who  was 
a  most  interesting  and  amiable  fact  of  those  delicate 
silences.  A  full  half  of  his  earlier  life  had  been  pass 
ed  in  Italy,  where  he  and  Longfellow  met  and  loved 
each  other  in  their  youth  with  an  affection  which  the 

192 


THE   WHITE   MR.   LONGFELLOW 

poet  was  constant  to  in  his  age,  after  many  vicissi 
tudes,  with  the  beautiful  fidelity  of  his  nature.  Greene 
was  like  an  old  Italian  house-priest  in  manner,  gentle, 
suave,  very  suave,  smooth  as  creamy  curds,  cultivated 
in  the  elegancies  of  literary  taste,  and  with  a  certain 
meek  abeyance.     I  think  I  never  heard  him  speak", 
in  all  those  evenings,  except  when  Longfellow  address 
ed  him,  though  he  must  have  had  the  Dante  scholar 
ship  for  an  occasional  criticism.     It  was  at  more  re 
cent  dinners,  where  I  met  him  with  the  Longfellow 
family  alone,  that  he  broke  now  and  then  into  a  quo 
tation  from  some  of  the  modern  Italian  poets  he  knew 
by  heart  (preferably  Giusti),  and  syllabled  their  verse 
with   an   exquisite   Roman   accent   and   a   bewitching 
Florentine  rhythm.     Now  and  then  at  these  times  he 
brought  out  a  faded  Italian  anecdote,  faintly  smelling 
of  civet,  and  threadbare  in  its  ancient  texture.     He 
liked  to  speak  of  Goldoni  and  of  ISFota,  of  Niccolini  and 
Manzoni,  of  Monti  and  Leopardi;   and  if  you  came 
to  America,  of  the  Revolution  and  his  grandfather, 
the  Quaker  General  Nathaniel  Greene,  whose  life  he 
wrote  (and  I  read)  in  three  volumes.     He  worshipped 
Longfellow,  and  their  friendship  continued  while  they 
lived,   but  towards  the  last  of  his  visits   at  Craigie 
House  it  had  a  pathos  for  the  witness  which  I  should 
grieve  to  wrong.     Greene  was  then  a  quivering  para 
lytic,  and  he  clung  tremulously  to  Longfellow's  arm 
in  going  out  to  dinner,  where  even  the  modern  Italian 
poets  were  silent  upon  his  lips.     When  we  rose  from 
table,  Longfellow  lifted  him  out  of  his  chair,  and  took 
him  upon  his  arm  again  for  their  return  to  the  study. 
He  was  of  lighter  metal  than  most  other  members  of 
the  Dante  Club,  and  he  was  not  of  their  immediate  in 
timacy,  living  away  from  Cambridge,  as  he  did,  and 
I  shared  his  silence  in  their  presence  with  full  sym- 

193 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

pathy.  I  was  by  far  the  youngest  of  their  number,  and 
I  cannot  yet  quite  make  out  why  I  was  of  it  at  all.  But 
at  every  moment  I  was  as  sensible  of  my  good  fortune 
as  of  my  ill  desert.  They  were  the  men  whom  of  all 
men  living  I  most  honored,  and  it  seemed  to  be  impos 
sible  that  I  at  my  age  should  be  so  perfectly  fulfilling 
the  dream  of  my  life  in  their  company.  Often  the 
nights  were  very  cold,  and  as  I  returned  home  from 
Craigie  House  to  the  carpenter's  box  on  Sacramento 
Street,  a  mile  or  two  away,  I  was  as  if  soul-borne 
through  the  air  by  my  pride  and  joy,  while  the  frozen 
blocks  of  snow  clinked  and  tinkled  before  my  feet 
stumbling  along  the  middle  of  the  road.  I  still  think 
that  was  the  richest  moment  of  my  life,  and  I  look  back 
at  it  as  the  moment,  in  a  life  not  unblessed  by  chance, 
which  I  would  most  like  to  live  over  again — if  I  must 
live  any. 

The  next  winter  the  sessions  of  the  Dante  Club  were 
transferred  to  the  house  of  Mr.  Norton,  who  was  then 
completing  his  version  of  the  Vita  Nuova.  This  has 
always  seemed  to  me  a  work  of  not  less  graceful  art 
than  Longfellow's  translation  of  the  Commedia.  In 
fact,  it  joins  the  effect  of  a  sympathy  almost  mounting 
to  divination  with  a  patient  scholarship  and  a  delicate 
skill  unknown  to  me  elsewhere  in  such  work.  I  do  not 
know  whether  Mr.  Norton  has  satisfied  himself  better 
in  his  prose  version  of  the  Commedia  than  in  this 
of  the  Vita  Nuova,  but  I  do  not  believe  he  could 
have  satisfied  Dante  better,  unless  he  had  rhymed  his 
sonnets  and  canzonets.  I  am  sure  he  might  have  done 
this  if  he  had  chosen.  He  has  always  pretended  that  it 
was  impossible,  but  miracles  are  never  impossible  in  the 
.right  hands. 


THE   WHITE  MR.  LONGFELLOW 


After  three  or  four  years  we  sold  the  carpenter's  box 
on  Sacramento  Street,  and  removed  to  a  larger  house 
near  Harvard  Square,  and  in  the  immediate  neighbor 
hood  of  Longfellow.  He  gave  me  an  easement  across 
that  old  garden  behind  his  house,  through  an  opening 
in  the  high  board  fence  which  enclosed  it,  and  I  saw 
him  oftener  than  ever,  though  the  meetings  of  the 
Dante  Club  had  come  to  an  end.  At  the  last  of  them, 
Lowell  had  asked  him,  with  fond  regret  in  his  jest, 
"  Longfellow,  why  don't  you  do  that  Indian  poem  in 
forty  thousand  verses  ?"  The  demand  but  feebly  ex 
pressed  the  reluctance  in  us  all,  though  I  suspect  the 
Indian  poem  existed  only  by  the  challenger's  invention. 
Before  I  leave  my  faint  and  unworthy  record  of  these 
great  times  I  am  tempted  to  mention  an  incident 
poignant  with  tragical  associations.  The  first  night  after 
Christmas  the  holly  and  the  pine  wreathed  about  the 
chandelier  above  the  supper-table  took  fire  from  the 
gas,  just  as  we  came  out  from  the  reading,  and  Long 
fellow  ran  forward  and  caught  the  burning  garlands 
down  and  bore  them  out.  JSTo  one  could  speak  for 
thinking  what  he  must  be  thinking  of  when  the  inef 
fable  calamity  of  his  home  befell  it.  Curtis  once  told 
me  that  a  little  while  before  Mrs.  Longfellow's  death 
he  was  driving  by  Craigic  House  with  Holmes,  who 
said  he  trembled  to  look  at  it,  for  those  who  lived  there 
had  their  happiness  so  perfect  that  no  change,  of  all  the 
changes  which  must  come  to  them,  could  fail  to  be  for 
the  worse. 

I  did  not  know  Longfellow  before  that  fatal  time,  and 
I  shall  not  say  that  his  presence  bore  record  of  it  ex 
cept  in  my  fancy.  He  may  always  have  had  that  look 
14  '  195 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

of  one  who  had  experienced  the  utmost  harm  that  fate 
can  do,  and  henceforth  could  possess  himself  of  what 
was  left  of  life  in  peace.  He  could  never  have  been  a 
man  of  the  flowing  ease  that  makes  all  comers  at  home ; 
some  people  complained  of  a  certain  gene  in  him;  and 
he  had  a  reserve  with  strangers,  which  never  quite  lost 
itself  in  the  abandon  of  friendship,  as  Lowell's  did, 
He  was  the  most  perfectly  modest  man  I  ever  saw,  ever 
imagined,  but  he  had  a  gentle  dignity  which  I  do  not 
believe  any  one,  the  coarsest,  the  obtusest,  could  tres 
pass  upon.  In  the  years  when  I  began  to  know  him, 
his  long  hair  and  the  beautiful  beard  which  mixed  with 
it  were  of  one  iron-gray,  which  I  saw  blanch  to  a  per 
fect  silver,  while  that  pearly  tone  of  his  complexion, 
which  Appleton  so  admired,  lost  itself  in  the  wanness 
of  age  and  pain.  When  he  walked,  he  had  a  kind  of 
spring  in  his  gait,  as  if  now  and  again  a  buoyant  thought 
lifted  him  from  the  ground.  It  was  fine  to  meet  him 
coming  down  a  Cambridge  street;  you  felt  that  the  en 
counter  made  you  a  part  of  literary  history,  and  set 
you  apart  with  him  for  the  moment  from  the  poor  and 
mean.  When  he  appeared  in  Harvard  Square,  he  beat 
ified  if  not  beautified  the  ugliest  and  vulgarest  looking 
spot  on  the  planet  outside  of  New  York.  You  could 
meet  him  sometimes  at  the  market,  if  you  were  of  the 
same  provision-man  as  he ;  and  Longfellow  remained  as 
constant  to  his  tradespeople  as  to  any  other  friends.  He 
rather  liked  to  bring  his  proofs  back  to  the  printer's 
himself,  and  we  often  found  ourselves  together  at  the 
University  Press,  where  the  Atlantic  Monthly  used  to 
be  printed.  But  outside  of  his  own  house  Longfellow 
seemed  to  want  a  fit  atmosphere,  and  I  love  best  to  think 
of  him  in  his  study,  where  he  wrought  at  his  lovely  art 
with  a  serenity  expressed  in  his  smooth,  regular,  and 
scrupulously  perfect  handwriting.  It  was  quite  ver- 

196 


THE   WHITE   ME.  LONGFELLOW 

tical,  and  rounded,  with  a  slope  neither  to  the  right  nor 
left,  and  at  the  time  I  knew  him  first,  he  was  fond  of 
using  a  soft  pencil  on  printing  paper,  though  common 
ly  he  wrote  with  a  quill.  Each  letter  was  distinct  in 
shape,  and  between  the  verses  was  always  the  exact 
space  of  half  an  inch.  I  have  a  good  many  of  his  poems 
written  in  this  fashion,  but  whether  they  were  the  first 
drafts  or  not  I  cannot  say;  very  likely  not.  Towards 
the  last  he  no  longer  sent  his  poems  to  the  magazines  in 
his  own  hand,  but  they  were  always  signed  in  autograph. 

I  once  asked  him  if  he  were  not  a  great  deal  inter 
rupted,  and  he  said,  with  a  faint  sigh,  Not  more  than 
was  good  for  him,  he  fancied ;  if  it  were  not  for  the  in 
terruptions,  he  might  overwork.  He  was  not  a  friend 
to  stated  exercise,  I  believe,  nor  fond  of  walking,  as 
Lowell  was;  he  had  not,  indeed,  the  childish  associa 
tions  of  the  younger  poet  with  the  Cambridge  neigh 
borhoods;  and  I  never  saw  him  walking  for  pleasure 
except  on  the  east  veranda  of  his  house,  though  I  was 
told  he  loved  walking  in  his  youth.  In  this  and  in  some 
other  things  Longfellow  was  more  European  than 
American,  more  Latin  than  Saxon.  He  once  said 
quaintly  that  one  got  a  great  deal  of  exercise  in  putting 
on  and  off  one's  overcoat  and  overshoes. 

I  suppose  no  one  who  asked  decently  at  his  door  was 
denied  access  to  him,  and  there  must  have  been  times 
when  he  was  overrun  with  volunteer  visitors;  but  I 
never  heard  him  complain  of  them.  He  was  very 
charitable  in  the  immediate  sort  which  Christ  seems  to 
have  meant;  but  he  had  his  preferences,  humorously 
owned,  among  beggars.  He  liked  the  German  beggars 
least,  and  the  Italian  beggars  most,  as  having  most 
savoir-faire;  in  fact,  we  all  loved  the  Italians  in  Cam 
bridge,  lie  was  pleased  with  the  accounts  I  could  give 
him  of  the  love  and  honor  I  had  known  for  him  in 

197. 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Italy,  and  one  day  there  came  a  letter  from  an  Italian 
admirer,  addressed  to  "  Mr.  Greatest  Poet  Longfel 
low,"  which  he  said  was  the  very  most  amusing  super 
scription  he  had  ever  seen. 

It  is  known  that  the  King  of  Italy  offered  Longfel 
low  the  cross  of  San  Lazzaro,  which  is  the  Italian  lit 
erary  decoration.  It  came  through  the  good  offices  of 
my  old  acquaintance  Professor  Messadaglia,  then  a 
deputy  in  the  Italian  Parliament,  whom,  for  some  rea 
son  I  cannot  remember,  I  had  put  in  correspondence 
with  Longfellow.  The  honor  was  wholly  unexpected, 
and  it  brought  Longfellow  a  distress  which  was  chiefly 
for  the  gentleman  who  had  procured  him  the  impos 
sible  distinction.  lie  showed  me  the  pretty  collar  and 
cross,  not,  I  think,  without  a  natural  pleasure  in  it.  ~No 
man  was  ever  less  a  bigot  in  things  civil  or  religious 
than  he,  but  he  said,  firmly,  "  Of  course,  as  a  republi 
can  and  a  Protestant,  I  can't  accept  a  decoration  from 
a  Catholic  prince."  His  decision  was  from  his  con 
science,  and  I  think  that  all  Americans  who  think  duly 
about  it  will  approve  his  decision. 

VI 

Such  honors  as  he  could  fitly  permit  himself  he  did 
not  refuse,  and  I  recall  what  zest  he  had  in  his  elec 
tion  to  the  Arcadian  Academy,  which  had  made  him  a 
shepherd  of  its  Eoman  Fold,  with  the  title,  as  he  said, 
of  "  Olimipico  something."  But  I  fancy  his  sweetest 
pleasure  in  his  vast  renown  came  from  his  popular 
recognition  everywhere.  Few  were  the  lands,  few  the 
languages  he  was  unknown  to :  he  showed  me  a  version 
of  the  "  Psalm  of  Life  "  in  Chinese.  Apparently  even 
the  poor  lost  autograph-seeker  was  not  denied  by  his 
universal  kindness ;  I  know  that  he  kept  a  store  of  auto- 

198 


THE   WHITE   MR.  LONGFELLOW 

graphs  ready  written  on  small  squares  of  paper  for  all 
who  applied  by  letter  or  in  person;  he  said  it  was  no 
trouble ;  but  perhaps  he  was  to  be  excused  for  refusing 
the  request  of  a  lady  for  fifty  autographs,  which  she 
wished  to  offer  as  a  novel  attraction  to  her  guests  at  a 
lunch  party. 

Foreigners  of  all  kinds  thronged  upon  him  at  their 
pleasure,  apparently,  and  with  perfect  impunity.  Some 
times  he  got  a  little  fun,  very,  very  kindly,  out  of  their 
excuses  and  reasons ;  and  the  Englishman  who  came  to 
see  him  because  there  were  no  ruins  to  visit  in  America 
was  no  fable,  as  I  can  testify  from  the  poet  himself. 
But  he  had  no  prejudice  against  Englishmen,  and  even 
at  a  certain  time  when  the  coarse-handed  British  criti 
cism  began  to  blame  his  delicate  art  for  the  universal 
acceptance  of  his  verse,  and  to  try  to  sneer  him  into 
the  rank  of  inferior  poets,  he  was  without  rancor  for 
the  clumsy  misliking  that  he  felt.  He  could  not  under 
stand  rudeness;  he  was  too  finely  framed  for  that;  he 
could  know  it  only  as  Swedenborg's  most  celestial  angels 
perceived  evil,  as  something  distressful,  angular.  The 
ill-will  that  seemed  nearly  always  to  go  with  adverse 
criticism  made  him  distrust  criticism,  and  the  dis 
comfort  which  mistaken  or  blundering  praise  gives 
probably  made  him  shy  of  all  criticism.  He  said 
that  in  his  early  life  as  an  author  he  used  to  seek 
out  and  save  all  the  notices  of  his  poems,  but  in  his 
latter  days  he  read  only  those  that  happened  to  fall 
in  his  way;  these  he  cut  out  and  amused  his  leisure 
by  putting  together  in  scrap  -  books.  He  was  re 
luctant  to  make  any  criticism  of  other  poets ;  I  do  not 
remember  ever  to  have  heard  him  make  one;  and  his 
writings  show  no  trace  of  the  literary  dislikes  or  con 
tempts  which  we  so  often  mistake  in  ourselves  for  right- 
eons  judgments.  No  doubt  he  had  his  resentments,  but 

199 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

he  hushed  them  in  his  heart,  which  he  did  not  suffer 
them  to  embitter.  While  Poe  was  writing  of  "  Long 
fellow  and  other  Plagiarists/'  Longfellow  was  helping 
to  keep  Poe  alive  by  the  loans  which  always  made  them 
selves  gifts  in  Poe's  case.  He  very,  very  rarely  spoke 
of  himself  at  all,  and  almost  never  of  the  grievances 
which  he  did  not  fail  to  share  with  all  who  live. 

He  was  patient,  as  I  said,  of  all  things,  and  gentle 
beyond  all  mere  gentlemanliness.  But  it  would  have 
been  a  great  mistake  to  mistake  his  mildness  for  soft 
ness.  It  was  most  manly  and  firm;  and  of  course  it 
was  braced  with  the  New  England  conscience  he  was 
born  to.  If  he  did  not  find  it  well  to  assert  himself,  ho 
was  prompt  in  behalf  of  his  friends,  and  one  of  the 
fine  things  told  of  him  was  his  resenting  some  cen 
sures  of  Sumner  at  a  dinner  in  Boston  during  the  old 
pro-slavery  times:  he  said  to  the  gentlemen  present 
that  Sumner  was  his  friend,  and  he  must  leave  their 
company  if  they  continued  to  assail  him. 

But  he  spoke  almost  as  rarely  of  his  friends  as  of 
himself.  He  liked  the  large,  impersonal  topics  which 
could  be  dealt  with  on  their  human  side,  and  involved 
characters  rather  than  individuals.  This  was  rather 
strange  in  Cambridge,  where  we  were  apt  to  take  our 
instances  from  the  environment.  It  was  not  the  only 
thing  he  was  strange  in  there ;  he  was  not  to  that  man 
ner  born ;  he  lacked  the  final  intimacies  which  can  come 
only  of  birth  and  lifelong  association,  and  which  make 
the  men  of  the  Boston  breed  seem  exclusive  when  they 
least  feel  so;  he  was  Longfellow  to  the  friends  who 
were  James,  and  Charles,  and  Wendell  to  one  another. 
He  and  Hawthorne  were  classmates  at  college,  but  I 
never  heard  him  mention  Hawthorne;  I  never  heard 
him  mention  Whittier  or  Emerson.  I  think  his  reti 
cence  about  his  contemporaries  was  largely  due  to  his 

200 


THE   WHITE  ME.  LONGFELLOW 

reluctance  from  criticism:  he  was  the  finest  artist  of 
them  all,  and  if  he  praised  he  must  have  praised  with 
the  reservations  of  an  honest  man.  Of  younger  writers 
he  was  willing  enough  to  speak.  No  new  contributor 
made  his  mark  in  the  magazine  unnoted  by  him,  and 
sometimes  I  showed  him  verse  in  manuscript  which  gave 
me  peculiar  pleasure.  I  remember  his  liking  for  the 
first  piece  that  Mr.  Maurice  Thompson  sent  me,  and 
how  lie  tasted  the  fresh  flavor  of  it,  and  inhaled  its 
wild  new  fragrance.  He  admired  the  skill  of  some  of 
the  young  story-tellers;  he  praised  the  subtlety  of  one 
in  working  out  an  intricate  character,  and  said  modest 
ly  that  lie  could  never  have  done  that  sort  of  thing  him 
self.  It  was  entirely  safe  to  invite  his  judgment  when 
in  doubt,  for  he  never  suffered  it  to  become  aggressive, 
or  used  it  to  urge  upon  me  the  manuscripts  that  must 
often  have  been  urged  upon  him. 

Longfellow  had  a  house  at  Nahant  where  he  went 
every  summer  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century. 
He  found  the  slight  transition  change  enough  from 
Cambridge,  and  liked  it  perhaps  because  it  did  not  take 
him  beyond  the  range  of  the  friends  and  strangers 
whose  company  he  liked.  Agassiz  was  there,  and  Ap- 
pleton;  Sumner  came  to  sojourn  with  him;  and  the 
tourists  of  all  nations  found  him  there  in  half  an  hour 
after  they  reached  Boston.  His  cottage  was  very  plain 
and  simple,  but  was  rich  in  the  sight  of  the  illimitable,  • 
sea,  arid  it  had  a  luxury  of  rocks  at  the  foot  of  its  gar 
den,  draped  with  sea-weed,  and  washed  with  the  inde 
fatigable  tides.  As  he  grew  older  and  feebler  he  ceased 
to  go  to  ISTahant ;  he  remained  the  whole  year  round  at 
Cambridge ;  he  professed  to  like  the  summer  which  he 
said  warmed  him  through  there,  better  than  the  cold 
spectacle  of  summer  which  had  no  such  effect  at  Nahant. 

The  hospitality  which  was  constant  at  either  house 
201 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

was  not  merely  of  the  worldly  sort.  Longfellow  loved 
good  cheer;  he  tasted  history  and  poetry  in  a  precious 
wine;  and  ho  liked  people  who  were  acquainted  with 
manners  and  men,  and  brought  the  air  of  capitals  with' 
them.  But  often  the  man  who  dined  with  Longfellow 
was  the  man  who  needed  a  dinner;  and  from  what  I 
have  seen  of  the  sweet  courtesy  that  governed  at  that 
board,  I  am  sure  that  such  a  man  could  never  have  felt 
himself  the  least  honored  guest.  The  poet's  heart  was 
open  to  all  the  homelessness  of  the  world ;  and  I  remem 
ber  how  once  when  we  sat  at  his  table  and  I  spoke  of  his 
poem  of  "  The  Challenge,"  then  a  new  poem,  and  said 
how  I  had  been  touched  by  the  fancy  of 

"  The  poverty-stricken  millions 

Who  challenge  our  wine  and  bread, 
And  impeach  us  all  as  traitors, 
Both  the  living  and  the  dead," 

his  voice  sank  in  grave  humility  as  he  answered,  "  Yes, 
I  often  think  of  those  things."  He  had  thought  of  them 
in  the  days  of  the  slave,  when  he  had  taken  his  place 
with  the  friends  of  the  hopeless  and  hapless,  and  as  long 
as  he  lived  he  continued  of  the  party  which  had  freed 
the  slave.  He  did  not  often  speak  of  politics,  but  when 
the  movement  of  some  of  the  best  Republicans  away 
from  their  party  began,  he  said  that  he  could  not  see  the 
wisdom  of  their  course.  But  this  was  said  without 
censure  or  criticism  of  them,  and  so  far  as  I  know  he 
never  permitted  himself  anything  like  denunciation  of 
those  who  in  any  wise  differed  from  him.  On  a  matter 
of  yet  deeper  interest,  I  do  not  feel  authorized  to  speak 
for  him,  but  I  think  that  as  he  grew  older,  his  hold  upon 
anything  like  a  creed  weakened,  though  he  remained  of 
the  Unitarian  philosophy  concerning  Christ.  He  did 
not  latterly  go  to  church,  I  believe ;  but  then,  very  few 
of  his  circle  were  church-goers.  Once  he  said  some- 

202 


THE   WHITE   ME.   LONGFELLOW 

thing  very  vague  and  uncertain  concerning  the  doctrine 
of  another  life  when  I  affirmed  my  hope  of  it,  to  the 
effect  that  he  wished  he  could  be  sure,  with  the  sigh 
that  so  often  clothed  the  expression  of  a  misgiving  with 
him. 

VII 

When  my  acquaintance  with  Longfellow  began  he 
had  written  the  things  that  made  his  fame,  and  that  it 
will  probably  rest  upon :  "  Evangeline,"  "  Hiawatha," 
and  the  "  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish  "  were  by  that 
time  old  stories.  But  during  the  eighteen  years  that  I 
knew  him  he  produced  the  best  of  his  minor  poems,  the 
greatest  of  his  sonnets,  the  sweetest  of  his  lyrics.  His 
art  ripened  to  the  last,  it  grew  richer  and  finer,  and  it 
never  knew  decay.  He  rarely  read  anything  of  his  own 
aloud,  but  in  three  or  four  cases  he  read  to  me  poems 
he  had  just  finished,  as  if  to  give  himself  the  pleasure 
of  hearing  them  with  the  sympathetic  sense  of  another. 
The  hexameter  piece,  "  Elizabeth,"  in  the  third  part  of 
"  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  was  one  of  these,  and  he 
liked  my  liking  its  rhythmical  form,  which  I  believed 
one  of  the  measures  best  adapted  to  the  English  speech, 
and  which  he  had  used  himself  with  so  much  pleasure 
and  success. 

About  this  time  he  was  greatly  interested  in  the  slight 
experiments  I  was  beginning  to  make  in  dramatic  form, 
and  he  said  that  if  he  were  himself  a  young  man  he 
should  write  altogether  for  the  stage;  he  thought  the 
drama  had  a  greater  future  with  us.  He  was  pleased 
when  a  popular  singer  wished  to  produce  his  "  Masque 
of  Pandora,"  with  music,  and  he  was  patient  when  it 
failed  of  the  effect  hoped  for  it  as  an  opera.  When  the 
late  Lawrence  Barrett,  in  the  enthusiasm  which  was 
one  of  the  fine  traits  of  his  generous  character,  had 

203 


taken  my  play  of  "  A  Counterfeit  Presentment/'  and 
came  to  the  Boston  Museum  with  it,  Longfellow  could 
not  apparently  have  been  more  zealous  for  its  popular 
acceptance  if  it  had  been  his  own  work.  He  invited 
himself  to  one  of  the  rehearsals  with  me,  and  he  sat 
with  me  on  the  stage  through  the  four  acts  with  a  forti 
tude  which  I  still  wonder  at,  and  with  the  keenest  zest 
for  all  the  details  of  the  performance.  No  finer  testi 
mony  to  the  love  and  honor  which  all  kinds  of  people 
had  for  him  could  have  been  given  than  that  shown  by 
the  actors  and  employees  of  the  theatre,  high  and  low. 
They  thronged  the  scenery,  those  who  were  not  upon  the 
stage,  and  at  the  edge  of  every  wing  were  faces  peering 
round  at  the  poet,  who  sat  unconscious  of  their  adora 
tion,  intent  upon  the  play.  He  was  intercepted  at  every 
step  in  going  out,  and  made  to  put  his  name  to  the  pho 
tographs  of  himself  which  his  worshippers  produced 
from  their  persons. 

He  came  to  the  first  night  of  the  piece,  and  when  it 
seemed  to  be  finding  favor  with  the  public,  he  leaned 
forward  out  of  his  line  to  nod  and  smile  at  the  author ; 
when  they  had  the  author  up,  it  was  the  sweetest  flat 
tery  of  the  applause  which  abused  his  fondness  that 
Longfellow  clapped  first  and  loudest. 

Where  once  he  had  given  his  kindness  he  could  not 
again  withhold  it,  and  he  was  anxious  no  fact  should  be 
interpreted  as  withdrawal.  When  the  Emperor  Dom 
Pedro  of  Brazil,  who  was  so  great  a  lover  of  Longfel 
low,  came  to  Boston,  he  asked  himself  out  to  dine  with 
the  poet,  who  had  expected  to  offer  him  some  such  hos 
pitality.  Soon  after,  Longfellow  met  me,  and  as  if 
eager  to  forestall  a  possible  feeling  in  me,  said,  "  I 
wanted  to  ask  you  to  dinner  with  the  Emperor,  but  he 
not  only  sent  word  he  was  coming,  he  named  his  fellow- 
guests!"  I  answered  that  though  I  should  probably 

204 


THE   WHITE   MR.   LONGFELLOW 

never  come  so  near  dining  with  an  emperor  again,  I 
prized  his  wish  to  ask  me  much  more  than  the  chance 
I  had  missed ;  and  with  this  my  great  and  good  friend 
seemed  a  little  consoled.  I  believe  that  I  do  not  speak 
too  confidently  of  our  relation.  He  was  truly  the 
friend  of  all  men,  but  I  had  certainly  the  advantage 
of  my  propinquity.  We  were  near  neighbors,  as  the 
pleonasm  has  it,  both  when  I  lived  on  Berkeley  Street 
and  after  I  had  built  my  own  house  on  Concord  Ave 
nue  ;  and  I  suppose  he  found  my  youthful  informality 
convenient.  He  always  asked  me  to  dinner  when  his 
old  friend  Greene  came  to  visit  him,  and  then  *ve  had 
an  Italian  time  together,  with  more  or  less  repetition 
in  our  talk,  of  what  we  had  said  before  of  Italian  poe 
try  and  Italian  character.  One  day  there  came  a  note 
from  him  saying,  in  effect,  "  Salvini  is  coming  out  to 
dine  with  me  to-morrow  night,  and  I  want  you  to  come 
too.  There  wrill  be  no  one  else  but  Greene  and  myself, 
and  we  will  have  an  Italian  dinner." 

Unhappily  I  had  accepted  a  dinner  in  Boston  for 
that  night,  and  this  invitation  put  me  in  great  misery. 
I  must  keep  my  engagement,  but  how  could  I  bear  to 
miss  meeting  Salviiii  at  Longfellow's  table  on  terms 
like  these?  We  consulted  at  home  together  and  ques 
tioned  whether  I  might  not  rush  into  Boston,  seek  out 
my  host  there,  possess  him  of  the  facts,  and  frankly 
throw  myself  on  his  mercy.  Then  a  sudden  thought 
struck  us:  Go  to  Longfellow,  and  submit  the  case  to 
him!  I  went,  and  he  entered  with  delicate  sympathy 
into  the  affair.  But  he  decided  that,  taking  the  large 
view  of  it,  I  must  keep  my  engagement,  lest  I  should 
run  even  a  remote  risk  of  wounding  my  friend's  sus 
ceptibilities.  I  obeyed,  and  I  had  a  very  good  time,  but 
I  still  feel  that  I  missed  the  best  time  of  my  life,  and 
that  I  ought  to  be  rewarded  for  my  sacrifice,  somewhere. 

205 


ii 


vld,  TridJ*  it  TT**  freaiL  is> 


-yf  liitcL  :  32*3  I  -Kill 


rt  -5rit 

'!  sas.1!  ~  W*rJi,  I 
t   'SLf 


*   t 

-r 


it   Lfc^   II%SL    Wk^i^vjcj'i  i*eafei%iMa1«ap%.     Of 

irr  rigil 


-r.- 


fctlfed.     lu  ^rit  ao'S  pwrtieai 
f  ju  *»  te  Trjr1^:  T^aiatrhr,  acrjl 

*  ^*a&ftT*l  T%gaj«2  to 
fjf 


l  'O-f  ia$  Kf*  :  1^  I  ttacii  Is/Lzi  ~.  .-  ~  -  -    •  - 

zsj  ^ftTzsjeg:  l&r**e®  ii^ustif  as*^  ti^ts,- 
d  fj^ca  Llzi,  asi  iica^r  tidct  Tia  4i;  i/s-M?  <** 


THE   WHITE   MR.   LONGFELLOW 

las,  when  he  spoke  of  people,  and  in  Cambridge,  where 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  contempt  for  the  less  lettered, 
and  we  liked  to  smile  though  we  did  not  like  to  sneer, 
and  to  analyze  if  we  did  not  censure,  Longfellow  and 
Longfellow's  house  were  free  of  all  that.  Whatever 
his  feeling  may  have  been  towards  other  sorts^  and  con 
ditions  of  men,  his  effect  was  of  an  entire  democracy. 
lie  was  always  the  most  unassuming  person  in  any 
company,  and  at  sonic  large  public  dinners  where  I  saw 
him  I  found  him  patient  of  the  greater  attention  that 
more  public  men  paid  themselves  and  one  another. 
lie  was  not  a  speaker,  and  I  never  saw  him  on  his  feet 
at  dinner,  except  once,  when  he  read  a  poem  for  Whit- 
tier,  who  was  absent,  lie  disliked  after-dinner  speak 
ing,  and  made  conditions  for  his  own  exemption  from 
it. 

VIII 

Once  your  friend,  Longfellow  was  always  your 
friend  ;  lie  would  not  think  evil  of  you,  and  if  he  knew 
evil  of  you,  he  would  be  the  last  of  all  that  knew  it  to 
judge  you  for  it.  This  may  have  been  from  the  im 
personal  habit  of  his  mind,  but  I  believe  it  was  also 
the  effect  of  principle,  for  ho  would  do  what  he  could 
to  arrest  the  delivery  of  judgment  from  others,  and 
would  soften  the  sentences  passed  in  his  presence. 
Naturally  this  brought  him  under  some  condemnation 
with  those  of  a  severer  cast;  and  I  have  heard  him 
criticised  for  his  benevolence  towards  all,  and  his  con 
stancy  to  some  who  were  not  quite  so  true  to  them 
selves,  perhaps,  lint  this  leniency  of  Longfellow's 
was  what  constituted  him  great  as  well  as  good,  for  it 
is  not  our  wisdom  that  censures  others.  As  for  his 
goodness,  I  never  saw  a  fault  in  him.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  he  had  no  faults,  or  that  there  were  no  bet- 


ter  men,  but  only  to  give  the  witness  of  my  knowledge 
concerning  him.  I  claim  in  no  wise  to  have  been  his 
intimate ;  such  a  thing  was  not  possible  in  my  case  for 
quite  apparent  reasons;  and  I  doubt  if  Longfellow 
was  capable  of  intimacy  in  the  sense  we  mostly  attach 
to  the  word.  Something  more  of  egotism  than  I  ever 
found  in  him  must  go  to  the  making  of  any  intimacy 
which  did  not  come  from  the  tenderest  affections  of  his 
heart.  But  as  a  man  shows  himself  to  those  often  with 
him,  and  in  his  noted  relations  with  other  men,  he 
showed  himself  without  blame.  All  men  that  I  have 
known,  besides,  have  had  some  foible  (it  often  endear 
ed  them  the  more),  or  some  meanness,  or  pettiness, 
or  bitterness;  but  Longfellow  had  none,  nor  the  sug 
gestion  of  any.  No  breath  of  evil  ever  touched  his 
name ;  he  went  in  and  out  among  his  fellow-men  with 
out  the  reproach  that  follows  wrong;  the  worst  thing 
I  ever  heard  said  of  him  was  that  he  had  gene.,  and  this 
was  said  by  one  of  those  difficult  Cambridge  men  who 
would  have  found  gene  in  a  celestial  angel.  Some 
thing  that  Bjornstjerne  Bjornson  wrote  to  ine  when  he 
was  leaving  America  after  a  winter  in  Cambridge, 
comes  nearer  suggesting  Longfellow  than  all  my  talk. 
The  Norsemen,  in  the  days  of  their  stormy  and  reluc 
tant  conversion,  used  always  to  speak  of  Christ  as  the 
White  Christ,  and  Bjornson  said  in  his  letter,  "  Give 
my  love  to  the  White  Mr.  Longfellow." 

A  good  many  years  before  Longfellow's  death  he 
began  to  be  sleepless,  and  he  suffered  greatly.  He 
said  to  me  once  that  he  felt  as  if  he  were  going  about 
with  his  heart  in  a  kind  of  mist.  The  whole  night 
through  he  would  not  be  aware  of  having  slept.  "  But," 
he  would  add,  with  his  heavenly  patience,  "  I  always 
get  a  good  deal  of  rest  from  lying  down  so  long."  I 
cannot  say  whether  these  conditions  persisted,  or  how 

208   - 


THE   WHITE   MR.   LONGFELLOW 

much  his  insomnia  had  to  do  with  his  breaking  health" ; 
three  or  four  years  before  the  end  came,  we  left  Cam 
bridge  for  a  house  farther  in  the  country,  and  I  saw 
him  less  frequently  than  before.  He  did  not  allow 
our  meetings  to  cease;  he  asked  me  to  dinner  from' 
time  to  time,  as  if  to  keep  them  up,  but  it  could  not 
be  with  the  old  frequency.  Once  he  made  a  point  of 
coming  to  see  us  in  our  cottage  on  the  hill  west  of  Cam 
bridge,  but  it  was  with  an  effort  not  visible  in  the  days 
when  he  could  end  one  of  his  brief  walks  at  our  house 
on  Concord  Avenue;  he  never  came  but  he  left  our 
house  more  luminous  for  his  having  been  there.  Once 
he  came  to  supper  there  to  meet  Garfield  (an  old  fam 
ily  friend  of  mine  in  Ohio),  and  though  he  was  suffer 
ing  from  a  heavy  cold,  he  would  not  scant  us  in  his 
stay.  I  had  some  very  bad  sherry  which  he  drank 
with  the  serenity  of  a  martyr,  and  I  shudder  to  this 
day  to  think  what  his  kindness  must  have  cost  him. 
He  told  his  story  of  the  clothes-line  ghost,  and  Garfield 
matched  it  with  the  story  of  an  umbrella  ghost  who 
sheltered  a  friend  of  his  through  a  midnight  storm, 
but  was  not  cheerful  company  to  his  beneficiary,  who 
passed  his  hand  through  him  at  one  point  in  the  effort 
to  take  his  arm. 

After  the  end  of  four  years  I  came  to  Cambridge  to 
be  treated  for  a  long  sickness,  which  had  nearly  been 
my  last,  and  when  I  could  get  about  I  returned  the 
visit  Longfellow  had  not  failed  to  pay  me.  But  I  did 
not  find  him,  and  I  never  saw  him  again  in  life.  I 
went  into  Boston  to  finish  the  winter  of  1881-2,  and 
from  time  to  time  I  heard  that  the  poet  was  failing  in 
health.  As  soon  as  I  felt  able  to  bear  the  horse-car 
journey  I  went  out  to  Cambridge  to  see  him.  I  had 
knocked  once  at  his  door,  the  friendly  door  that  had 
so  often  opened  to  Ids  welcome,  and  stood  with  the 

209 


LITERAEY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

knocker  in  my  hand  when  the  door  was  suddenly  set 
ajar,  and  a  maid  showed  her  face  wet  with  tears. 
"  How  is  Mr.  Longfellow  ?"  I  palpitated,  and  with  a 
burst  of  grief  she  answered,  "  Oh,  the  poor  gentleman 
has  just  departed !"  I  turned  away  as  if  from  a  help 
less  intrusion  at  a  death-bed. 

'  At  the  services  held  in  the  house  before  the  obsequies 
at  the  cemetery,  I  saw  the  poet  for  the  last  time,  where 

"  Dead  he  lay  among  his  books," 

in  the  library  behind  his  study.  Death  seldom  fails 
to  bring  serenity  to  all,  and  I  will  not  pretend  that 
there  was  a  peculiar  peacefulness  in  Longfellow's  no 
ble  mask,  as  I  saw  it  then.  It  was  calm  and  benign 
as  it  had  been  in  life ;  he  could  not  have  worn  a  gentler 
aspect  in  going  out  of  the  world  than  he  had  always 
worn  in  it;  he  had  not  to  wait  for  death  to  dignify 
it  with  "  the  peace  of  God."  All  who  were  left  of 
his  old  Cambridge  were  present,  and  among  those  who 
had  come  farther  was  Emerson.  He  went  up  to  the 
bier,  and  with  his  arms  crossed  on  his  breast,  and  his 
elbows  held  in  either  hand,  stood  with  his  head  patheti 
cally  fallen  forward,  looking  down  at  the  dead  face. 
Those  who  knew  how  his  memory  was  a  mere  blank, 
with  faint  gleams  of  recognition  capriciously  coming 
'and  going  in  it,  must  have  felt  that  he  was  struggling 
ito  remember  who  it  was  lay  there  before  him ;  and  for 
me  the  electly  simple  words  confessing  his  failure  will 
always  be  pathetic  with  his  remembered  aspect:  "  The 
gentleman  we  have  just  been  burying,"  he  said,  to  the 
friend  who  had  come  with  him,  "  was  a  sweet  and  beau 
tiful  soul ;  but  I  forget  his  name." 

I  had  the  privilege  and  honor  of  looking  over  the 
imprinted  poems  Longfellow  left  behind  him,  and  of 
helping  to  decide  which  of  them  should  be  published. 

210 


THE   WHITE   MR.  LONGFELLOW 

There  were  not  many  of  them,  and  some  of  these  few 
were  quite  fragmentary.  I  gave  my  voice  for  the  pub 
lication  of  all  that  had  any  sort  of  completeness,  for 
in  every  one  there  was  a  touch  of  his  exquisite  art,  the 
grace  of  his  most  lovely  spirit.  We  have  so  far  had  two 
men  only  who  felt  the  claim  of  their  gift  to  the  very 
best  that  the  most  patient  skill  could  give  its  utterance : 
one  was  Hawthorne  and  the  other  was  Longfellow.  I 
shall  not  undertake  to  say  which  was  the  greater  artist 
of  these  two;  but  I  am  sure  that  every  one  who  has 
studied  it  must  feel  with  me  that  the  art  of  Longfellow 
held  out  to  the  end  with  no  touch  of  decay  in  it,  and 
that  it  equalled  the  art  of  any  other  poet  of  his  time. 
It  knew  when  to  give  itself,  and  more  and  more  it  knew 
when  to  withhold  itself. 

What  Longfellow's  place  in  literature  will  be,  I 
shall  not  offer  to  say;  that  is  Time's  affair,  not  mine; 
but  I  am  sure  that  with  Tennyson  and  Browning  he 
fully  shared  in  the  expression  of  an  age  which  more 
completely  than  any  former  age  got  itself  said  by  its 
poets. 

IS 


f»art  Seventb 
STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

"  HAVE  already  spoken  of  my  earliest  meetings  with 
-*-  Lowell  at  Cambridge  when  I  came  to  New  Eng 
land  on  a  literary  pilgrimage  from  the  West  in  1860. 
I  saw  him  more  and  more  after  I  went  to  live  in 
Cambridge  in  1866;  and  I  now  wish  to  record  what  I 
knew  of  him  during  the  years  that  passed  between  this 
date  and  that  of  his  death.  If  the  portrait  I  shall  try 
to  paint  does  not  seem  a  faithful  likeness  to  others 
who  knew  him,  I  shall  only  claim  that  so  he  looked  to 
me,  at  this  moment  and  at  that.  If  I  do  not  keep  my 
self  quite  out  of  the  picture,  what  painter  ever  did  ? 


It  was  in  the  summer  of  1865  that  I  came  home 
from  my  consular  post  at  Venice ;  and  two  weeks  after 
I  landed  in  Boston,  I  went  out  to  see  Lowell  at  Elm- 
wood,  and  give  him  an  inkstand  that  I  had  brought 
him  from  Italy.  The  bronze  lobster  whose  back  open 
ed  and  disclosed  an  inkpot  and  a  sand-box  was  quite 
ugly;  but  I  thought  it  beautiful  then,  and  if  Lowell 
thought  otherwise  he  never  did  anything  to  let  me 
know  it.  He  put  the  thing  in  the  middle  of  his  writ 
ing-table  (he  nearly  always  wrote  on  a  pasteboard  pad 
resting  upon  his  knees),  and  there  it  remained  as  long 
as  I  knew  the  place — a  matter  of  twenty-five  years; 

212, 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

but  in  all  that  time  I  suppose  the  inkpot  continued  as 
dry  as  the  sand-box. 

My  visit  was  in  the  heat  of  August,  which  is  as  fer 
vid  in  Cambridge  as  it  can  well  be  anywhere,  and  I 
still  have  a  sense  of  his  study  windows  lifted  to  the 
summer  night,  and  the  crickets  and  grasshoppers  cry 
ing  in  at  them  from  the  lawns  and  the  gardens  outside. 
Other  people  went  away  from  Cambridge  in  the  sum 
mer  to  the  sea  and  to  the  mountains,  but  Lowell  always 
stayed  at  Elmwood,  in  an  impassioned  love  for  his 
home  and  for  his  town.  I  must  have  found  him  there 
in  the  afternoon,  arid  he  must  have  made  me  sup  with 
him  (dinner  was  at  two  o'clock)  and  then  go  with  him 
for  a  long  night  of  talk  in  his  study.  He  liked  to  have 
some  one  help  him  idle  the  time  away,  and  keep  him  as 
long  as  possible  from  his  work ;  and  no  doubt  I  was  im 
personally  serving  his  turn  in  this  way,  aside  from  any 
pleasure  he  might  have  had  in  my  company  as  some  one 
he  had  always  been  kind  to,  and  as  a  fresh  arrival  from 
the  Italy  dear  to  us  both. 

He  lighted  his  pipe,  and  from  the  depths  of  his  easy- 
chair,  invited  my  shy  youth  to  all  the  ease  it  was  capa 
ble  of  in  his,  presence.  It  was  not  much ;  I  loved  him, 
and  he  gave  me  reason  to  think  that  he  was  fond  of  me, 
but  in  Lowell  I  was  always  conscious  of  an  older  and 
closer  and  stricter  civilization  than  my  own,  an  un 
broken  tradition,  a  more  authoritative  status.  His  de 
mocracy  was  more  of  the  head  and  mine  more  of  the 
heart,  and  his  denied  the  equality  which  mine  affirmed. 
But  his  nature  was  so  noble  and  his  reason  so  tolerant 
that  whenever  in  our  long  acquaintance  I  found  it 
well  to  come  to  open  rebellion,  as  I  more  than  once  did, 
he  admitted  my  right  of  insurrection,  and  never  resent 
ed  the  outbreak.  I  disliked  to  differ  with  him,  and 
perhaps  he  subtly  felt  this  so  much  that  he  would  not 

213 


LITEEARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

dislike  me  for  doing  it.  He  even  suffered  being  taxed 
with  inconsistency,  and  where  he  saw  that  he  had  not 
been  quite  just,  he  would  take  punishment  for  his 
error,  with  a  contrition  that  was  sometimes  humorous 
and  always  touching. 

Just  then  it  was  the  dark  hour  before  the  dawn  with 
Italy,  and  he  was  interested  but  not  much  encouraged 
by  what  I  could  tell  him  of  the  feeling  in  Venice 
against  the  Austrians.  lie  seemed  to  reserve  a  like 
scepticism  concerning  the  fine  things  I  was  hoping  for 
the  Italians  in  literature,  and  he  confessed  an  interest 
in  the  facts  treated  which  in  the  retrospect,  I  am  aware, 
was  more  tolerant  than  participant  of  my  enthusiasm. 
That  was  always  Lowell's  attitude  towards  the  opinions 
of  people  he  liked,  when  he  could  not  go  their  lengths 
with  them,  and  nothing  was  more  characteristic  of  his 
affectionate  nature  and  his  just  intelligence.  He  was  a 
man  of  the  most  strenuous  convictions,  but  he  loved 
many  sorts  of  people  whose  convictions  he  disagreed 
with,  and  he  suffered  even  prejudices  counter  to  hia 
own  if  they  were  not  ignoble.  In  the  whimsicalities 
of  others  he  delighted  as  much  as  in  his  own. 


II 

Our  associations  with  Italy  held  over  until  the  next 
day,  when  after  breakfast  he  went  with  me  towards 
Boston  as  far  as  "  the  village  " :  for  so  he  liked  to  speak 
of  Cambridge  in  the  custom  of  his  younger  days  when 
wide  tracts  of  meadow  separated  Harvard  Square  from 
his  life-long  home  at  Elmwood.  We  stood  on  the  plat 
form  of  the  horse-car  together,  and  when  I  objected  to 
his  paying  my  fare  in  the  American  fashion,  he  allowed 
that  the  Italian  usage  of  each  paying  for  himself  was 
the  politer  way.  He  would  not  commit  himself  about 

214 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

my  returning  to  Venice  (for  I  had  not  given  up  my 
place,  yet,  and  was  away  on  leave),  but  he  intimated 
his  distrust  of  the  flattering  conditions  of  life  abroad, 
lie  said  it  was  charming  to  be  treated  da  signore,  but 
he  seemed  to  doubt  whether  it  was  well ;  and  in  this  as 
in  all  other  things  he  showed  his  final  fealty  to  the 
American  ideal. 

It  was  that  serious  and  great  moment  after  the  suc 
cessful  close  of  the  civil  war  when  the  republican  con 
sciousness  was  more  robust  in  us  than  ever  before  or 
since ;  but  I  cannot  recall  any  reference  to  the  historical 
interest  of  the  time  in  Lowell's  talk.  It  had  been  all 
about  literature  and  about  travel ;  and  now  with  the 
suggestion  of  the  word  village  it  began  to  be  a  little 
about  his  youth.  I  have  said  before  how  reluctant 
he  was  to  let  his  youth  go  from  him;  and  perhaps  the 
touch  with  my  juniority  had  made  him  realize  how  near 
he  was  to  fifty,  and  set  him  thinking  of  the  past  which 
had  sorrows  in  it  to  age  him  beyond  his  years.  He 
would  never  speak  of  these,  though  he  often  spoke  of  the 
past.  He  told  once  of  having  beenonabricf  journey  when 
he  was  six  years  old,  with  his  father,  and  of  driving  up 
to  the  gate  of  Elmwood  in  the  evening,  and  his  father 
saying,  "  Ah,  this  is  a  pleasant  place !  I  wonder  who 
lives  here — what  little  boy  ?"  At  another  time  he 
pointed  out  a  certain  window  in  his  study,  and  said  he 
could  see  himself  standing  by  it  when  he  could  only 
get  his  chin  on  the  window-sill.  His  memories  of  the 
house,  and  of  everything  belonging  to  it,  wero  very 
tender;  but  he  could  laugh  over  an  escapade  of  his 
youth  when  he  helped  his  fellow-students  pull  down  his 
father's  fences,  in  the  pure  zeal  of  good-comradeship. 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 


III 

My  fortunes  took  me  to  New  York,  and  I  spent  most 
of  the  winter  of  1865-6  writing  in  the  office  of  The  Na 
tion.  I  contributed  several  sketches  of  Italian  travel  to 
that  paper;  and  one  of  these  brought  me  a  precious 
letter  from  Lowell.  lie  praised  my  sketch,  which  he 
said  he  had  read  without  the  least  notion  who  had  writ 
ten  it,  and  he  wanted  me  to  feel  the  full  value  of  such 
an  impersonal  pleasure  in  it.  At  the  same  time  he  did 
not  fail  to  tell  me  that  he  disliked  some  pseudo-cynical 
verses  of  mine  which  he  had  read  in  another  place ;  and 
I  believe  it  was  then  that  he  bade  me  "  sweat  the  Heine 
out  of  "  me,  "  as  men  sweat  the  mercury  out  of  their 
bones." 

When  I  was  asked  to  be  assistant  editor  of  the  At 
lantic  Monthly,  and  came  on  to  Boston  to  talk  the  mat 
ter  over  with  the  publishers,  I  went  out  to  Cambridge 
and  consulted  Lowell.  He  strongly  urged  me  to  take 
the  position  (I  thought  myself  hopefully  placed  in  lSTew 
York  011  The  Nation} ;  and  at  the  same  time  he  seemed 
to  have  it  on  his  heart  to  say  that  he  had  recommended 
some  one  else  for  it,  never,  he  owned,  having  thought 
of  me. 

He  was  most  cordial,  but  after  I  came  to  live  in 
Cambridge  (where  the  magazine  was  printed,  and  I 
could  more  conveniently  look  over  the  proofs),  he  did 
not  call  on  me  for  more  than  a  month,  and  seemed  quite 
to  have  forgotten  me.  We  met  one  night  at  Mr.  Nor 
ton's,  for  one  of  the  Dante  readings,  and  he  took  no 
special  notice  of  me  till  I  happened  to  say  something 
that  offered  him  a  chance  to  give  me  a  little  humorous 
snub.  I  was  speaking  of  a  paper  in  the  Magazine  on 
the  "  Claudian  Emissary,"  and  I  demanded  (no  doubt  a 
little  too  airily)  something  like  "  Who  in  the  world 

216 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

ever  heard  of  the  Claudian  Emissary  ?"  "  You  are  in 
Cambridge,  Mr.  Howells,"  Lowell  answered,  and  laugh 
ed  at  my  confusion.  Having  put  me  down,  he  seemed 
to  soften  towards  me,  and  at  parting  he  said,  with  a 
light  of  half-mocking  tenderness  in  his  beautiful  eyes, 
"  Good-night,  fellow-townsman."  "  I  hardly  knew  we 
were  fellow-townsmen,"  I  returned.  He  liked  that, 
apparently,  and  said  he  had  been  meaning  to  call  upon 
me,  and  that  he  was  coming  very  soon. 

He  was  as  good  as  his  word,  and  after  that  hardly  a 
week  of  any  kind  of  weather  passed  but  he  mounted  the 
steps  to  the  door  of  the  ugly  little  house  in  which  I 
lived,  two  miles  away  from  him,  and  asked  me  to  walk. 
These  walks  continued,  I  suppose,  until  Lowell  went 
abroad  for  a  winter  in  the  early  seventies.  They  took 
us  all  over  Cambridge,  which  he  knew  and  loved  every 
inch  of,  and  led  us  afield  through  the  straggling,  un 
handsome  outskirts,  bedrabbled  with  squalid  Irish 
neighborhoods,  and  fraying  off  into  marshes  and  salt 
meadows.  He  liked  to  indulge  an  excess  of  admiration 
for  the  local  landscape,  and  though  I  never  heard  him 
profess  a  preference  for  the  Charles  River  flats  to  the 
finest  Alpine  scenery,  I  could  well  believe  he'  would  do 
so  under  provocation  of  a  fit  listener's  surprise.  He  had 
always  so  much  of  the  boy  in  him  that  he  liked  to  tease 
the  over-serious  or  over-sincere.  He  liked'  to  tease  and 
he  liked  to  mock,  especially  his  juniors,  if  any  touch  of 
affectation,  or  any  little  exuberance  of  manner  gave  him 
the  chance;  wrhen  he  once  came  to  fetch  me,  and  the 
young  mistress  of  the  house  entered  with  a  certain  ex 
cessive  elasticity,  he  sprang  from  his  seat,  and  minced 
towards  her,  with  a  burlesque  of  her  buoyant  carriage 
—which  made  her  laugh.  When  he  had  given  us  his 
heart  in  trust  of  ours,  he  used  us  like  a  younger  brother 
and  sister,  or  like  bis  own  children.  He  included  our 

217 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

children  in  his  affection,  and  he  enjoyed  our  fondness 
for  them  as  if  it  were  something  that  had  come  back 
to  him  from  his  own  youth.  I  think  he  had  also  a  sort 
of  artistic,  a  sort  of  ethical  pleasure  in  it,  as  being  of 
the  good  tradition,  of  the  old  honest,  simple  material, 
from  which  pleasing  effects  in  literature  and  civiliza 
tion  were  wrought.  He  liked  giving  the  children  books, 
and  writing  tricksy  fancies  in  these,  where  he  masked 
as  a  fairy  prince ;  and  as  long  as  he  lived  he  remembered 
his  early  kindness  for  them. 


IV 

In  those  walks  of  ours  I  believe  he  did  most  of  the 
talking,  and  from  his  talk  then  and  at  other  times  there 
remains  to  me  an  impression  of  his  growing  conserva 
tism.  I  had  in  fact  come  into  his  life  when  it  had  spent 
its  impulse  towards  positive  reform,  and  I  was  to  be 
witness  of  its  increasing  tendency  towards  the  negative 
sort.  He  was  quite  past  the  storm  and  stress  of  his  anti- 
slavery  age ;  with  the  close  of  the  war  which  had  broken 
for  him  all  his  ideals  of  inviolable  peace,  he  had  reached 
the  age  of  misgiving.  I  do  not  mean  that  I  ever  heard 
him  express  doubt  of  what  ho  had  helped  to  do,  or  regret 
for  what  he  had  done ;  but  I  know  that  he  viewed  with 
critical  anxiety  what  other  men  were  doing  with  the 
accomplished  facts.  His  anxiety  gave  a  cast  of  what 
one  may  call  reluctance  from  the  political  situation,  and 
turned  him  back  towards  those  civic  and  social  defences 
which  he  had  once  seemed  willing  to  abandon.  I  do  not 
mean  that  he  lost  faith  in  democracy ;  this  faith  he  con 
stantly  then  and  signally  afterwards  affirmed;  but  he 
certainly  had  no  longer  any  faith  in  insubordination  as 
a  means  of  grace.  He  preached  a  quite  Socratic  rever 
ence  for  law,  as  law,  and  I  remember  that  once  when  I 

218 


STUDIES   OF   LOWELL 

had  got  back  from  Canada  in  the  usual  disgust  for  the 
American  custom-house,   and  spoke  lightly  of  smug 
gling  as  not  an  evil  in  itself,  and  perhaps  even  a  right 
under  our  vexatious  tariff,  he  would  not  have  it,  but 
held  that  the  illegality  of  the  act  made  it  a  moral  of 
fence.    This  was  not  the  logic  that  would  have  justified 
the  attitude  of  the  antislavery  men  towards  the  fugitive 
slave  act;  but  it  was  in  accord  with  Lowell's  feeling 
about  John  Brown,  whom  he  honored  while  always  con 
demning  his  violation  of  law ;  and  it  was  in  the  line  of 
all  his  later  thinking.     In  this,  he  wished  you  to  agree 
with  him,  or  at  least  he  wished  to  make  you ;  but  he  did 
not  wish  you  to  be  more  of  his  mind  than  he  was  him 
self.     In  one  of  those  squalid  Irish  neighborhoods  I 
confessed  a  grudge  (a  mean  and  cruel  grudge,  I  now 
think  it)  for  the  increasing  presence  of  that  race  among 
us,  but  this  did  not  please  him;  and  I  am  sure  that 
whatever  misgiving  he  had  as  to  the  future  of  America, 
he  would  not  have  had  it  less  than  it  had  been  the 
refuge  and  opportunity  of  the  poor  of  any  race  or  color. 
Yet  he  would  not  have  had  it  this  alone.    There  was  a 
line  in  his  poem  on  Agassiz  which  he  left  out  of  the 
printed  version,  at  the  fervent  entreaty  of  his  friends, 
as   saying   too   bitterly   his    disappointment   with   his 
country.     Writing  at  the  distance  of  Europe,  and  with 
America  in  the  perspective  which  the  alien  environ 
ment  clouded,  he  spoke  of  her  as  "  The  Land  of  Broken 
Promise."    It  was  a  splendid  reproach,  but  perhaps  too 
dramatic  to  bear  the  full  test  of  analysis,  and  yet  it  had 
the  truth  in  it,  and  might,  I  think,  have  usefully  stood, 
to  the  end  of  making  people  think.    Undoubtedly  it  ex 
pressed  his  sense  of  the  case,  and  in  the  same  measure 
it  would  now  express  that  of  many  who  love  their  coun 
try  most  among  us.     It  is  well  to  hold  one's  country  to 
her  promises,  and  if  there  are  any  who  think  she  is  for- 

219 


LITEKARY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

getting  them  it  is  their  duty  to  say  so,  even  to  the  point 
of  bitter  accusation.  I  do  not  suppose  it  was  the  "  com 
mon  man "  of  Lincoln's  dream  that  Lowell  thought 
America  was  unfaithful  to,  though  as  I  have  suggested 
he  could  be  tender  of  the  common  man's  hopes  in  her ; 
but  he  was  impeaching  in  that  blotted  line  her  sincerity 
with  the  uncommon  man :  the  man  who  had  expected  of 
her  a  constancy  to  the  ideals  of  her  youth  and  to  the 
high  martyr-moods  of  the  war  which  had  given  an  un 
guarded  and  bewildering  freedom  to  a  race  of  slaves. 
lie  was  thinking  of  the  shame  of  our  municipal  corrup 
tions,  the  debased  quality  of  our  national  statesman 
ship,  the  decadence  of  our  whole  civic  tone,  rather  than 
of  the  increasing  disabilities  of  the  hard-working  poor, 
though  his  heart  when  he  thought  of  them  was  with 
them,  too,  as  it  was  in  "  the  time  when  the  slave  would 
not  let  him  sleep." 

He  spoke  very  rarely  of  those  times,  perhaps  because 
their  political  and  social  associations  were  so  knit  up 
with  the  saddest  and  tenderest  personal  memories,  which 
it  was  still  anguish  to  touch.  JSTot  only  was  he 

" — not  of  the  race 
That  hawk  their  sorrows  in  the  market  place," 

but  so  far  as  rny  witness  went  he  shrank  from  mention 
of  them.  I  do  not  remember  hearing  him  speak  of  the 
young  wife  who  influenced  him  so  potently  at  the  most 
vital  moment,  and  turned  him  from  his  whole  scholarly 
and  aristocratic  tradition  to  an  impassioned  champion 
ship  of  the  oppressed;  and  he  never  spoke  of  the  chil 
dren  he  had  lost.  I  recall  but  one  allusion  to  the  days 
when  he  was  fighting  the  antislavery  battle  along  the 
whole  line,  and  this  was  with  a  humorous  relish  of  his 
Irish  servant's  disgust  in  having  to  wait  upon  a  negro 
whom  he  had  asked  to  his  table. 

He  was  rather  severe  in  his  notions  of  the  subordina- 
220 


STUDIES    OF   LOWELL 

tion  his  domestics  owed  him.  They  were  "  to  do  as  they 
were  bid,"  and  yet  he  had  a  tenderness  for  such  as  had 
been  any  time  with  him,  which  was  wounded  when  once 
a  hired  man  long  in  his  employ  greedily  overreached 
him  in  a  certain  transaction.  He  complained  of  that 
with  a  simple  grief  for  the  man's  indelicacy  after  so 
many  favors  from  him,  rather  than  with  any  resent 
ment.  His  hauteur  towards  his  dependents  was  theo 
retic;  his  actual  behavior  was  of  the  gentle  considera 
tion  common  among  Americans  of  good  breeding,  and 
that  recreant  hired  man  had  no  doubt  never  been  suf 
fered  to  exceed  him  in  shows  of  mutual  politeness. 
Often  when  the  maid  was  about  weightier  matters,  he 
came  and  opened  his  door  to  me  himself,  welcoming  me 
with  the  smile  that  was  like  no  other.  Sometimes  he 
i$aid,  "  Sietc  il  benvenuto"  or  used  some  other  Italian 
phrase,  which  put  me  at  ease  with  him  in  the  region 
where  we  were  most  at  home  together. 

Looking  back  I  must  confess  that  I  do  not  see  what  it 
was  he  found  to  make  him  wish  for  my  company,  which 
he  presently  insisted  upon  having  once  a  week  at  din 
ner.  After  the  meal  we  turned  into  his  study  where 
we  sat  before  a  wood  fire  in  winter,  and  he  smoked  and 
talked.  lie  smoked  a  pipe  which  was  always  needing 
tobacco,  or  going  out,  so  that  I  have  the  figure  of  him 
before  my  eyes  constantly  getting  out  of  his  deep  chair 
to  rekindle  it  from  the  fire  with  a  paper  lighter.  He 
was  often  out  of  his  chair  to  get  a  book  from  the  shelves 
that  lined  the  walls,  either  for  a  passage  which  he 
wished  to  read,  or  for  some  disputed  point  which  he 
wished  to  settle.  If  I  had  caused  the  dispute,  he  enjoyed 
putting  me  in  the  wrong;  if  he  could  not,  he  sometimes 
whimsically  persisted  in  his  error,  in  defiance  of  all 
•authority;  but  mostly  he  had  such  reverence  for  the 
truth  that  he  would  not  question  it  even  in  jest. 

221  . 


L1TEKAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

If  I  dropped  in  upon  him  in  the  afternoon  I  was  apt 
to  find  him  reading  the  old  French  poets,  or  the  plays 
of  Calderon,  or  the  Divina  Gommedm,  which  he 
magnanimously  supposed  me  much  better  acquainted 
with  than  I  was  because  I  knew  some  passages  of  it  by 
heart.  One  day  I  came  in  quoting — 

"  Io  son,  cantava,  io  son  dolce  Sirena, 
Che  i  marinai  in  mezzo  al  mar  dismago." 

He  stared  at  me  in  a  rapture  with  the  matchless 
music,  and  then  uttered  all  his  adoration  and  despair 
in  one  word.  "Damn!"  he  said,  and  no  more.  I  be 
lieve  he  instantly  proposed  a  walk  that  day,  as  if  his 
study  walls  with  all  their  vistas  into  the  great  litera 
tures  cramped  his  soul  liberated  to  a  sense  of  ineffable 
beauty  of  the  verse  of  the  somma  poeta.  But  commonly 
he  preferred  to  have  me  sit  down  with  him  there  among 
the  mute  witnesses  of  the  larger  part  of  his  life.  Aa 
I  have  suggested  in  my  own  case,  it  did  not  matter 
much  whether  you  brought  anything  to  the  feast  or  not. 
If  he  liked  you  he  liked  being  with  you,  not  for  what 
he  got,  but  for  what  he  gave.  He  was  fond  of  one  man 
whom  I  recall  as  the  most  silent  man  I  ever  met.  I 
never  heard  him  say  anything,  not  even  a  dull  thing, 
but  Lowell  delighted  in  him,  and  would  have  you  believe 
that  he  was  full  of  quaint  humor. 


While  Lowell  lived  there  was  a  superstition,  which 
has  perhaps  survived  him,  that  he  was  an  indolent  man, 
wasting  himself  in  barren  studies  and  minor  efforts 
instead  of  devoting  his  great  powers  to  some  monu 
mental  work  worthy  of  them.  If  the  robust  body  of  lit 
erature,  both  poetry  and  prose,  which  lives  after  him 
does  not  yet  correct  this  vain  delusion,  the  time  will 

.222 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

come  when  it  must ;  and  in  the  meantime  the  delusion 
cannot  vex  him  now.  I  think  it  did  vex  him,  then,  and 
that  he  even  shared  it,  and  tried  at  times  to  meet  such 
shadowy  claim  as  it  had.  One  of  the  things  that  people 
urged  upon  him  was  to  write  some  sort  of  story,  and  it 
is  known  how  he  attempted  this  in  verse.  It  is  less 
known  that  he  attempted  it  in  prose,  and  that  he  went 
so  far  as  to  write  the  first  chapter  of  a  novel.  He  read 
this  to  me,  and  though  I  praised  it  then,  I  have  a  feel 
ing  now  that  if  he  had  finished  the  novel  it  would  have 
been  a  failure.  "  But  I  shall  never  finish  it,"  he  sighed, 
as  if  he  felt  irremediable  defects  in  it,  and  laid  the 
manuscript  away,  to  turn  arid  light  his  pipe.  It  was  a 
rather  old-fashioned  study  of  a  whimsical  character, 
and  it  did  not  arrive  anywhere,  so  far  as  it  went;  but 
I  believe  that  it  might  have  been  different  with  a 
Yankee  story  in  verse  such  as  we  have  fragmentarily 
in  The  Nooning  and  Fitz Adam's  Story.  Still,  his 
gift  was  essentially  lyrical  and  meditative,  with  the 
universal  l^ew  England  tendency  to  allegory.  He  was 
wholly  undramatic  in  the  actuation  of  the  characters 
which  he  imagined  so  dramatically.  He  liked  to  deal 
with  his  subject  at  first  hand,  to  indulge  through  him 
self  all  the  whim  and  fancy  which  the  more  dramatic 
talent  indulges  through  its  personages. 

He  enjoyed  writing  such  a  poem  as  "  The  Cathedral," 
which  is  not  of  his  best,  but  which  is  more  immediately 
himself,  in  all  his  moods,  than  some  better  poems.  He 
read  it  to  me  soon  after  it  was  written,  and  in  the  long 
walk  which  we  went  hard  upon  the  reading  (our  way 
led  us  through  the  Port  far  towards  East  Cambridge, 
where  he  wished  to  show  me  a  tupelo-tree  of  his 
acquaintance,  because  I  said  I  had  never  seen  one),  his 
talk  was  still  of  the  poem  which  he  was  greatly  in  con 
ceit  of.  Later  his  satisfaction  with  it  received  a  check 

223 


LITERAEY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

from  the  reserves  of  other  friends  concerning  some 
whimsical  lines  which  seemed  to  them  too  great  a  drop 
from  the  higher  moods  of  the  piece.  Their  reluctance 
nettled  him;  perhaps  he  agreed  with  them;  but  he 
would  not  change  the  lines,  and  they  stand  as  he  first 
wrote  them.  In  fact,  most  of  his  lines  stand  as  he  first 
wrote  them;  he  would  often  change  them  in  revision, 
and  then,  in  a  second  revision  go  back  to  the  first  version. 

He  was  very  sensitive  to  criticism,  especially  from 
those  he  valued  through  his  head  or  heart.  He  would 
try  to  hide  his  hurt,  and  he  would  not  let  you  speak  of 
it,  as  though  your  sympathy  unmanned  him,  but  you 
could  see  that  he  suffered.  This  notably  happened  in 
my  remembrance  from  a  review  in  a  journal  which  he 
greatly  esteemed ;  and  once  when  in  a  notice  of  my  own 
I  had  put  one  little  thorny  point  among  the  flowers,  he 
confessed  a  puncture  from  it.  lie  praised  the  criticism 
hardily,  but  I  knew  that  ho  winced  under  my  recogni 
tion  of  the  didactic  quality  which  he  had  not  quite 
guarded  himself  against  in  the  poetry  otherwise  praised. 
He  liked  your  liking,  and  he  openly  rejoiced  in  it;  and 
I  suppose  he  made  himself  believe  that  in  trying  his 
verse  with  his  friends  he  was  testing  it;  but  I  do  not 
believe  that  he  was,  and  I  do  not  think  he  ever  corrected 
his  judgment  by  theirs,  however  he  suffered  from  it. 

In  any  matter  that  concerned  literary  morals  he  was 
more  than  eager  to  profit  by  another  eye.  One  summer 
he  sent  me  for  the  Magazine  a  poem  which,  when  I 
read  it,  I  trembled  to  find  in  motive  almost  exactly  like 
one  we  had  lately  printed  by  another  contributor.  There 
was  nothing  for  it  but  to  call  his  attention  to  the  re 
semblance,  and  I  went  over  to  Elmwood  with  the  two 
poems.  He  was  not  at  home,  and  I  was  obliged  to  leave 
the  poems,  I  suppose  with  some  sort  of  note,  for  the 
next  morning's  post  brought  me  a  delicious  letter  from 

224; 


him,  all  one  cry  of  confession,  the  most  complete,  the 
most  ample.  He  did  not  trouble  himself  to  say  that  his 
poem  was  an  unconscious  reproduction  of  the  other; 
that  was  for  every  reason  unnecessary,  but  he  had  at 
once  rewritten  it  upon  wholly  different  lines ;  and  I  do 
not  think  any  reader  was  reminded  of  Mrs.  Akers's 
"  Among  the  Laurels  "  by  Lowell's  "  Foot-path."  He 
was  not  only  much  more  sensitive  of  others'  rights  than 
his  own,  but  in  spite  of  a  certain  severity  in  him,  he 
was  most  tenderly  regardful  of  their  sensibilities  when 
he  had  imagined  them :  he  did  not  always  imagine  them. 


VI 

At  this  period,  between  the  years  1866  and  1874, 
when  he  unwillingly  went  abroad  for  a  twelvemonth, 
Lowell  was  seen  in  very  few  Cambridge  houses,  and  in 
still  fewer  Boston  houses.  He  was  not  an  unsocial  man, 
but  he  was  most  distinctly  not  a  society  man.  He  loved 
chiefly  the  companionship  of  books,  and  of  men  who 
loved  books;  but  of  women  generally  he  had  an  amus 
ing  diffidence ;  he  revered  them  and  honored  them,  but 
he  would  rather  not  have  had  them  about.  This  is 
oversaying  it,  of  course,  but  the  truth  is  in  what  I  say. 
There  was  never  a  more  devoted  husband,  and  he  was 
content  to  let  his  devotion  to  the  sex  end  with  that. 
He  especially  could  not  abide  difference  of  opinion  in 
women ;  he  valued  their  taste,  their  wit,  their  humor, 
but  he  would  have  none  of  their  reason.  I  was  by  one 
day  when  he  was  arguing  a  point  with  one  of  his  nieces, 
and  after  it  had  gone  on  for  some  time,  and  the  impar 
tial  witness  must  have  owned  that  she  was  getting  the 
better  of  him  he  closed  the  controversy  by  giving  her 
a  great  kiss,  with  the  words,  "  You  are  a  very  good 
girl,  my  dear,"  and  practically  putting  her  out  of  the 

225. 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

room.  As  to  women  of  the  flirtatious  type,  he  did  not 
dislike  them;  no  man,  perhaps,  does;  but  he  feared 
them,  and  he  said  that  with  them  there  was  but  one 
way,  and  that  was  to  run. 

I  have  a  notion  that  at  this  period  Lowell  was  more 
freely  and  fully  himself  than  at  any  other.  The  pas 
sions  and  impulses  of  his  younger  manhood  had  mel 
lowed,  the  sorrows  of  that  time  had  softened ;  he  could 
blamelessly  live  to  himself  in  his  affections  and  his 
sobered  ideals.  His  was  always  a  duteous  life;  but 
he  had  pretty  well  given  up  making  man  over  in  his 
own  image,  as  we  all  wish  some  time  to  do,  and  then  no 
longer  wish  it.  He  fulfilled  his  obligations  to  his  fel 
low-men  as  these  sought  him  out,  but  he  had  ceased  to 
seek  them.  He  loved  his  friends  and  their  love,  but  he 
had  apparently  no  desire  to  enlarge  their  circle.  It 
was  that  hour  of  civic  suspense,  in  which  public  men 
seemed  still  actuated  by  unselfish  aims,  and  one  not 
essentially  a  politician  might  contentedly  wait  to  see 
what  would  come  of  their  doing  their  best.  At  any  rate, 
without  occasionally  withholding  open  criticism  or  ac 
claim  Lowell  waited  among  his  books  for  the  wounds 
of  the  war  to  heal  themselves,  and  the  nation  to  begin 
her  healthfuller  and  nobler  life.  With  slavery  gone, 
what  might  not  one  expect  of  American  democracy ! 

His  life  at  Elmwood  was  of  an  entire  simplicity.  In 
the  old  colonial  mansion  in  which  he  was  born,  he  dwelt 
in  the  embowering  leafage,  amid  the  quiet  of  lawns  and 
garden-plots  broken  by  few  noises  ruder  than  those  from 
the  elms  and  the  syringas  where 

"  The  oriole  clattered  and  the  cat-bird  sang." 

From  the  tracks  on  Brattle  Street,  came  the  drowsy 
tinkle  of  horse-car  bells ;  and  sometimes  a  funeral  trail 
ed  its  black  length  past  the  corner  of  his  grounds,  and 

,226 


lost  itself  from  sight  under  the  shadows  of  the  willows 
that  hid  Mount  Auburn  from  his  study  windows.  In 
the  winter  the  deep  New  England  snows  kept  their 
purity  in  the  stretch  of  meadow  behind  the  house,  which 
a  double  row  of  pines  guarded  in  a  domestic  privacy. 
All  was  of  a  modest  dignity  within  arid  without  the 
house,  which  Lowell  loved  but  did  not  imagine  of  a 
manorial  presence ;  and  he  could  not  conceal  his  annoy 
ance  with  an  over-enthusiastic  account  of  his  home  in 
which  the  simple  chiselling  of  some  panels  was  vaunted 
as  rich  wood-carving.  There  was  a  graceful  staircase, 
and  a  good  wide  hall,  from  which  the  dining-room  and 
drawing-room  opened  by  opposite  doors ;  behind  the  last, 
in  the  southwest  corner  of  the  house,  was  his  study. 

There,  literally,  he  lived  during  the  six  or  seven 
years  in  which  I  knew  him  after  my  coming  to  Cam 
bridge.  Summer  and  winter  he  sat  there  among  his 
books,  seldom  stirring  abroad  by  day  except  for  a  walk, 
and  by  night  yet  more  rarely.  He  went  to  the  monthly 
mid-day  dinner  of  the  Saturday  Club  in  Boston;  he 
was  very  constant  at  the  fortnightly  meetings  of  his 
whist-club,  because  he  loved  the  old  friends  who  formed 
it ;  he  came  always  to  the  Dante  suppers  at  Longfellow's, 
and  he  was  familiarly  in  and  out  at  Mr.  Norton's,  of 
course.  But,  otherwise,  he  kept  to  his  study,  except  for 
some  rare  and  almost  unwilling  absences  upon  uni 
versity  lecturing  at  Johns  Hopkins  or  at  Cornell. 

For  four  years  I  did  not  take  any  summer  outing 
from  Cambridge  myself,  and  my  associations  with  Elm- 
wood  and  with  Lowell  are  more  of  summer  than  of 
winter  weather  meetings.  But  often  we  went  our  walks 
through  the  snows,  trudging  along  between  the. horse- 
car  tracks  which  enclosed  the  only  well-broken-out  paths 
in  that  simple  old  Cambridge.  I  date  one  memorable 
expression  of  his  from  such  a  walk,  when,  as  we  were 
16  -227 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

passing  Longfellow's  house,  in  mid-street,  he  came  as 
near  the  declaration  of  his  religious  faith  as  he  ever  did 
in  my  presence.  He  was  speaking  of  the  New  Testa 
ment,  and  he  said,  The  truth  was  in  it;  but  they  had 
covered  it  up  with  their  hagiology.  Though  he  had 
been  bred  a  Unitarian,  and  had  more  and  more  lib 
erated  himself  from  all  creeds,  he  humorously  affected 
an  abiding  belief  in  hell,  and  similarly  contended  for 
the  eternal  punishment  of  the  wicked.  He  was  of  a  re 
ligious  nature,  and  he  was  very  reverent  of  other  peo 
ple's  religious  feelings.  He  expressed  a  special  tol 
erance  for  my  own  inherited  faith,  no  doubt  because 
Mrs.  Lowell  was  also  a  Swedenborgian ;  but  I  do  not 
think  he  was  interested  in  it,  and  I  suspect  that  all  re 
ligious  formulations  bored  him.  In  his  earlier  poems 
are  many  intimations  and  affirmations  of  belief  in  an 
overruling  providence,  and  especially  in  the  God  who 
declares  vengeance  His  and  will  repay  men  for  their 
evil  deeds,  and  will  right  the  weak  against  the  strong. 
I  think  he  never  quite  lost  this,  though  when,  in  the  last 
years  of  his  life,  I  asked  him  if  he  believed  there  was 
a  moral  government  of  the  universe,  he  answered  grave 
ly  and  with  a  sort  of  pain,  The  scale  was  so  vast,  and 
we  saw  such  a  little  part  of  it. 

As  to  the  notion  of  a  life  after  death,  I  never  had 
any  direct  or  indirect  expression  from  him ;  but  I  in 
cline  to  the  opinion  that  his  hold  upon  this  weakened 
with  his  years,  as  it  is  sadly  apt  to  do  with  men  who 
have  read  much  and  thought  much:  they  have  appar 
ently  exhausted  their  potentialities  of  psychological 
life.  Mystical  Lowell  was,  as  every  poet  must  be,  but 
I  do  not  think  lie  liked  mystery.  One  morning  he 
told  me  that  when  he  came  home  the  night  before  he 
had  seen  the  Doppelgdnger  of  one  of  his  household: 
though,  as  he  joked,  he  was  not  in  a  state  to  see  double. 

228 


STUDIES    OF   LOWELL 

He  then  said  he  used  often  to  see  people's  Doppel- 
gdnger;  at  another  time,  as  to  ghosts,  he  said,  He  was 
like  Coleridge:  he  had  seen  too  many  of  'em.  Lest 
any  weaker  brethren  should  be  caused  to  offend  by  the 
restricted  oath  which  I  have  reported  him  using  in 
a  moment  of  transport  it  may  be  best  to  note  here  that 
I  never  heard  him  use  any  other  imprecation,  and  this 
one  seldom. 

Any  grossness  of  speech  was  inconceivable  of  him; 
now  and  then,  but  only  very  rarely,  the  human  nature 
of  some  story  "  unmeet  for  ladies  "  was  too  much  for 
his  sense  of  humor,  and  overcame  him  with  amuse 
ment  which  he  was  willing  to  impart,  and  did  impart, 
but  so  that  mainly  the  human  nature  of  it  reached  you. 
In  this  he  was  like  the  other  great  Cambridge  men, 
though  he  was  opener  than  the  others  to  contact  with 
the  commoner  life.  He  keenly  delighted  in  every  na 
tive  and  novel  turn  of  phrase,  and  he  would  not  under 
value  a  vital  word  or  a  notion  picked  up  out  of  the 
road  even  if  it  had  some  dirt  sticking  to  it. 

He  kept  as  close  to  the  common  life  as  a  man  of  his 
patrician  instincts  and  cloistered  habits  could.  I 
could  go  to  him  with  any  new  find  about  it  and  be  sure 
of  delighting  him;  after  I  began  making  my  involun 
tary  and  all  but  unconscious  studies  of  Yankee  charac 
ter,  especially  in  the  country,  he  was  always  glad  to  talk 
them  over  with  me.  Still,  when  I  had  discovered  a 
new  accent  or  turn  of  speech  in  the  fields  he  had  cul 
tivated,  I  was  aware  of  a  subtle  grudge  mingling  with 
his  pleasure;  but  this  was  after  all  less  envy  than  a 
fine  regret. 

At  the  time  I  speak  of  there  was  certainly  nothing 
in  Lowell's  dress  or  bearing  that  would  have  kept  the 
common  life  aloof  from  him,  if  that  life  were  not  al 
ways  too  proud  to  make  advances  to  any  one.  In 

229 


L1TEEARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

this  retrospect,  I  see  him  in  the  sack  coat  and  rough 
suit  which  he  wore  upon  all  out-door  occasions,  with 
heavy  shoes,  and  a  round  hat.  I  never  saw  him  with 
a  high  hat  on  till  he  came  home  after  his  diplomatic 
stay  in  London;  then  he  had  become  rather  rigorously 
correct  in  his  costume,  and  as  conventional  as  he  had 
formerly  been  indifferent.  In  both  epochs  he  was  apt 
to  be  gloved,  and  the  strong,  broad  hands,  which  left 
the  sensation  of  their  vigor  for  some  time  after  they 
had  clasped  yours,  were  notably  white.  At  the  earlier 
period,  he  still  wore  his  auburn  hair  somewhat  long; 
it  was  darker  than  his  beard,  which  was  branching  and 
full,  and  more  straw-colored  than  auburn,  as  were  his 
thick  eyebrows;  neither  hair  nor  beard  was  then 
touched  with  gray,  as  I  now  remember.  When  he  un 
covered,  his  straight,  wide,  white  forehead  showed  itself 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  that  could  be ;  his  eyes  were 
gay  with  humor,  and  alert  with  all  intelligence.  He 
had  an  enchanting  smile,  a  laugh  that  was  full  of 
friendly  joyousness,  and  a  voice  that  was  exquisite 
music.  Everything  about  him  expressed  his  strenu 
ous  physical  condition:  he  would  not  wear  an  overcoat 
in  the  coldest  Cambridge  weather;  at  all  times  he 
moved  vigorously,  and  walked  with  a  quick  step,  lift 
ing  his  feet  well  from  the  ground. 

VII 

It  gives  me  a  pleasure  which  I  am  afraid  I  cannot 
impart,  to  linger  in  this  effort  to  materialize  his  pres 
ence  from  the  fading  memories  of  the  past.  I  am 
afraid  I  can  as  little  impart  a  due  sense  of  what  he 
spiritually  was  to  my  knowledge.  It  avails  nothing 
for  me  to  say  that  I  think  no  man  of  my  years  and 
desert  had  ever  so  true  and  constant  a  friend.  He 

230 


was  both  younger  and  older  than  I  by  insomuch  as  he 
was  a  poet  through  and  through,  and  had  been  out  of 
college  before  I  was  born.  But  he  had  already  come 
to  the  age  of  self-distrust  when  a  man  likes  to  take 
counsel  with  his  juniors  as  with  his  elders,  and  fancies 
he  can  correct  his  perspective  by  the  test  of  their  fresh 
er  vision.  Besides,  Lowell  was  most  simply  and  pa-, 
thetically  reluctant  to  part  with  youth,  and  was  will 
ing  to  cling  to  it  wherever  he  found  it.  He  could  not 
in  any  wise  bear  to  be  left  out.  When  Mr.  Bret  Harte 
came  to  Cambridge,  and  the  talk  was  all  of  the  brill 
iant  character  -  poems  with  which  he  had  then  first 
dazzled  the  world,  Lowell  casually  said,  with  a  most 
touching,  however  ungrounded  sense  of  obsolescence, 
He  could  remember  when  the  Bigloiu  Papers  were  all 
the  talk.  I  need  not  declare  that  there  was  nothing 
ungenerous  in  that.  He  was  only  too  ready  to  hand 
down  his  laurels  to  a  younger  man;  but  he  wished  to 
do  it  himself.  Through  the  modesty  that  is  always 
a  quality  of  such  a  nature,  he  was  magnanimously 
sensitive  to  the  appearance  of  fading  interest;  he  could 
not  take  it  otherwise  than  as  a  proof  of  his  fading 
power.  I  had  a  curious  hint  of  this  when  one  year  in 
making  up  the  prospectus  of  the  Magazine  for  the  next, 
I  omitted  his  name  because  I  had  nothing  special  to 
promise  from  him,  and  because  I  was  half  ashamed  to 
be  always  flourishing  it  in  the  eyes  of  the  public.  "  I 
see  that  you  have  dropped  me  this  year/'  he  wrote,  and 
I  could  see  that  it  had  hurt,  and  I  knew  that  he  was 
glad  to  believe  the  truth  when  I  told  him. 

He  did  not  care  so  much  for  popularity  as  for  the 
praise  of  his  friends.  If  he  liked  you  he  wished  you 
not  only  to  like  what  he  wrote,  but  to  say  so.  He  was 
himself  most  cordial  in  his  recognition  of  the  things 
that  pleased  him.  What  happened  to  me  from  him, 

231 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

happened  to  others,  and  I  am  only  describing  his  com 
mon  habit  when  I  say  that  nothing  I  did  to  his  liking 
failed  to  bring  me  a  spoken  or  oftener  a  written  ac 
knowledgment.  This  continued  to  the  latest  years  of 
his  life  when  the  effort  even  to  give  such  pleasure  must 
have  cost  him  a  physical  pang. 

He  was  of  a  very  catholic  taste ;  and  he  \vas  apt  to  be 
carried  away  by  a  little  touch  of  life  or  humor,  and  to 
overvalue  the  piece  in  which  he  found  it;  but  mainly 
his  judgments  of  letters  and  men  were  just.  One  of 
the  dangers  of  scholarship  was  a  peculiar  danger 
in  the  Cambridge  keeping,  but  Lowell  was  almost  as 
averse  as  Longfellow  from  contempt.  He  could  snub, 
and  pitilessly,  where  he  thought  there  was  presump 
tion  and  apparently  sometimes  merely  because  he  was 
in  the  mood;  but  I  cannot  remember  ever  to  have 
heard  him  sneer.  He  was  often  wonderfully  patient 
of  tiresome  people,  and  sometimes  celestially  insensi 
ble  to  vulgarity.  In  spite  of  his  reserve,  he  really 
wished  people  to  like  him;  he  was  keenly  alive  to 
neighborly  good-will  or  ill-will;  and  when  there  was 
a  question  of  widening  Elmwood  avenue  by  taking  part 
of  his  grounds,  he  was  keenly  hurt  by  hearing  that 
some  one  who  lived  near  him  had  said  he  hoped  the 
city  would  cut  down  Lowell's  elms:  his  English  elms, 
which  his  father  had  planted,  and  with  which  he  was 
himself  almost  one  blood ! 


VIII 

In  the  period  of  which  I  am  speaking,  Lowell  was 
constantly  writing  and  pretty  constantly  printing, 
though  still  the  superstition  held  that  he  was  an  idle 
man.  To  this  time  belongs  the  publication  of  some  of 
his  finest  poems,  if  not  their  inception:  there  were  cases 

.232 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

in  which  their  inception  dated  far  back,  even  to  ten  or 
twenty  years.  He  wrote  his  poems  at  a  heat,  and  the 
manuscript  which  came  to  me  for  the  magazine  was 
usually  the  first  draft,  very  little  corrected.  But  if  the 
cold  fit  took  him  quickly  it  might  hold  him  so  fast  that 
he  would  leave  the  poem  in  abeyance  till  he  could  slow 
ly  live  back  to  a  liking  for  it. 

The  most  of  his  best  prose  belongs  to  the  time  be 
tween  1866  and  1874,  and  to  this  time  we  owe  the 
several  volumes  of  essays  and  criticisms  called  Among 
My  Books  and  My  Study  Windows.  He  wished  to 
name  these  more  soberly,  but  at  the  urgence  of  his  pub 
lishers  he  gave  them  titles  which  they  thought  would  be 
attractive  to  the  public,  though  he  felt  that  they  took 
from  the  dignity  of  his  work.  He  was  not  a  good  busi 
ness  man  in  a  literary  way,  he  submitted  to  others'  judg 
ment  in  all  such  matters.  I  doubt  if  he  ever  put  a  price 
upon  anything  he  sold,  and  I  dare  say  he  was  usually 
surprised  at  the  largeness  of  the  price  paid  him;  but 
sometimes  if  his  need  was  for  a  larger  sum,  he  thought 
it  too  little,  without  reference  to  former  payments. 
This  happened  with  a  long  poem  in  the  Atlantic.,  which 
I  had  urged  the  counting-room  authorities  to  deal  hand 
somely  with  him  for.  I  did  not  know  how  many  hun 
dred  they  gave  him,  and  when  I  met  him  I  ventured  to 
express  the  hope  that  the  publishers  had  done  their  part. 
He  held  up  four  fingers,  "  Quattro"  he  said  in  Italian, 
and  then  added  with  a  disappointment  which  he  tried 
to  smile  away,  "  I  thought  they  might  have  made  it 
cinque" 

Between  me  and  me  I  thought  quattro  very  well,  but 
probably  Lowell  had  in  mind  some  end  which  cinque 
would  have  fitted  better.  It  was  pretty  sure  to  be  an 
unselfish  end,  a  pleasure  to  some  one  dear  to  him,  a  gift 
that  he  had  wished  to  make.  Long  afterwards  when  I 

233 


had  been  the  means  of  getting  him  cinque  for  a  poem 
one-tenth  the  length,  he  spoke  of  the  payment  to  me. 
"  It  came  very  handily ;  I  had  been  wanting  to  give 

a  watch." 

I  do  not  believe  at  any  time  Lowell  was  able  to  deal 
with  money 

"  Like  wealthy  men,  not  knowing  what  they  give." 

More  probably  he  felt  a  sacredness  in  the  money  got  by 
literature,  which  the  literary  man  never  quite  rids  him 
self  of,  even  when  he  is  not  a  poet,  and  which  made  him 
wish  to  dedicate  it  to  something  finer  than  the  every 
day  uses.  He  lived  very  quietly,  but  he  had  by  no 
means  more  than  he  needed  to  live  upon,  and  at  that 
time  he  had  pecuniary  losses.  He  was  writing  hard, 
and  was  doing  full  work  in  his  Harvard  professorship, 
and  he  was  so  far  dependent  upon  his  salary,  that  he 
felt  its  absence  for  the  year  he  went  abroad.  I  do  not 
know  quite  how  to  express  my  sense  of  something  un 
worldly,  of  something  almost  womanlike  in  his  relation 
to  money. 

He  was  not  only  generous  of  money,  but  he  was  gen 
erous  of  himself,  when  he  thought  he  could  be  of  use, 
or  merely  of  encouragement.  He  came  all  the  way  into 
Boston  to  hear  certain  lectures  of  mine  on  the  Italian 
poets,  which  he  could  not  have  found  either  edifying  or 
amusing,  that  he  might  testify  his  interest  in  me,  and 
show  other  people  that  they  were  worth  coming  to.  He 
would  go  carefully  over  a  poem  with  me,  word  by  word, 
and  criticise  every  turn  of  phrase,  and  after  all  be 
magnanimously  tolerant  of  my  sticking  to  phrasings 
that  he  disliked.  In  a  certain  line : 

"  The  silvern  chords  of  the  piano  trembled," 

he  objected  to  silvern.     Why  not  silver  ?     I  alleged 

234 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

leathern,  golden,  and  like  adjectives  in  defence  of  my 
word;  but  still  he  found  an  affectation  in  it,  and  suf 
fered  it  to  stand  with  extreme  reluctance.    Another  line 
of  another  piece — 
"  And  what  she  would,  would  rather  that  she  would  not " — 

he  would  by  no  means  suffer.  He  said  that  the  stress 
falling  on  the  last  word  made  it  "  public-school  Eng 
lish,"  and  he  mocked  it  with  the  answer  a  maid  had 
lately  given  him  when  he  asked  if  the  master  of  the 
house  was  at  home.  She  said,  "  jSTo,  sir,  he  is  not," 
when  she  ought  to  have  said  "  !N"o,  sir,  he  isn't."  He 
was  appeased  when  I  came  back  the  next  day  with  the 
stanza  amended  so  that  the  verse  could  read — 

"  And  what  she  would,  would  rather  she  would  not  so  " — 

but  I  fancy  he  never  quite  forgave  my  word  silvern. 
Yet,  he  professed  not  to  have  prejudices  in  such  mat 
ters,  but  to  use  any  word  that  would  serve  his  turn, 
without  wincing;  and  he  certainly  did  use  and  defend 
words,  as  undisprivacwd  and  disnatured,  that  made 
others  wince. 

He  was  otherwise  such  a  stickler  for  the  best  diction 
that  he  would  not  have  had  me  use  slovenly  vernacular 
even  in  the  dialogue  in  my  stories :  my  characters  must 
not  say  they  wanted  to  do  so  and  so,  but  wished,  and  the 
like.  In  a  copy  of  one  of  my  books  which  I  found  him 
reading,  I  saw  he  had  corrected  my  erring  Western 
woulds  and  shoulds;  as  he  grew  old  he  was  less  and  less 
able  to  restrain  himself  from  setting  people  right  to  their 
faces.  Once,  in  the  vast  area  of  my  ignorance,  he  speci 
fied  my  small  acquaintance  with  a  certain  period  of  Eng 
lish  poetry,  saying,  "  You're  rather  shady,  there,  old  fel 
low."  But  he  would  not  have  had  me  too  learned,  hold 
ing  that  he  had  himself  been  hurt  for  literature  by  his 
scholarship. 

235 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  'ACQUAINTANCE 

His  patience  in  analyzing  my  work  with  me  might 
have  been  the  easy  effort  of  his  habit  of  teaching;  and 
his  willingness  to  give  himself  and  his  own  was  no 
doubt  more  signally  attested  in  his  asking  a  brother  man 
of  letters  who  wished  to  work  up  a  subject  in  the  col 
lege  library,  to  stay  a  fortnight  in  his  house,  and  to 
share  his  study,  his  beloved  study,  with  him.  This  must 
truly  have  cost  him  dear,  as  any  author  of  fixed  habits 
will  understand.  Happily  the  man  of  letters  was  a 
good  fellow,  and  knew  how  to  prize  the  favor  done  him, 
but  if  he  had  been  otherwise,  it  would  have  been  the 
same  to  Lowell.  He  not  only  endured,  but  did  many 
things  for  the  weaker  brethren,  which  were  amusing 
enough  to  one  in  the  secret  of  his  inward  revolt.  Yet 
in  these  things  he  was  considerate  also  of  the  editor 
whom  he  might  have  made  the  sharer  of  his  self-sacri 
fice,  and  he  seldom  offered  me  manuscripts  for  others. 
The  only  real  burden  of  the  kind  that  he  put  upon  me 
was  the  diary  of  a  Virginian  who  had  travelled  in  New 
England  during  the  early  thirties,  and  had  set  down  his 
impressions  of  men  and  manners  there.  It  began 
charmingly,  and  went  on  very  well  under  Lowell's  dis 
creet  pruning,  but  after  a  while  he  seemed  to  fall  in 
love  with  the  character  of  the  diarist  so  much  that  he 
could  not  bear  to  cut  anything. 

IX 

He  had  a  great  tenderness  for  the  broken  and  ruined 
South,  whose  sins  he  felt  that  he  had  had  his  share  in 
visiting  upon  her,  and  he  was  willing  to  do  what  he 
could  to  ease  her  sorrows  in  the  case  of  any  particular 
Southerner.  He  could  not  help  looking  askance  upon 
the  dramatic  shows  of  retribution  which  some  of  the 
Northern  politicians  were  working,  but  with  all  his 
misgivings  he  continued  to  act  with  the  Republican 

23G 


STUDIES   OF   LOWELL 

party  until  after  the  election  of  Hayes;  he  was  away 
from  the  country  during  the  Garh'eld  campaign.  He 
was  in  fact  one  of  the  Massachusetts  electors  chosen  by 
the  Republican  majority  in  1876,  and  in  that  most 
painful  hour  when  there  was  question  of  the  policy  and 
justice  of  counting  Hayes  in  for  the  presidency,  it  was 
suggested  by  some  of  Lowell's  friends  that  he  should 
use  the  original  right  of  the  electors  under  the  consti 
tution,  and  vote  for  Tilden,  whom  one  vote  would  have 
chosen  president  over  Hayes.  After  he  had  cast  his 
vote  for  Hayes,  he  quietly  referred  to  the  matter  one 
day,  in  the  moment  of  lighting  his  pipe,  with  perhaps 
the  faintest  trace  of  indignation  in  his  tone.  He  said 
that  whatever  the  first  intent  of  the  constitution  was, 
usage  had  made  the  presidential  electors  strictly  the 
instruments  of  the  party  which  chose  them,  and  that  for 
him  to  have  voted  for  Tilden  when  he  had  been  chosen 
to  vote  for  Hayes  would  have  been  an  act  of  bad  faith. 

He  would  have  resumed  for  me  all  the  old  kind 
ness  of  our  relations  before  the  recent  year  of  his  ab 
sence,  but  this  had  inevitably  worked  a  little  estrange 
ment.  He  had  at  least  lost  the  habit  of  me,  and  that 
says  much  in  such  matters.  He  was  not  so  perfectly 
at  rest  in  the  Cambridge  environment ;  in  certain  inde 
finable  ways  it  did  not  so  entirely  suffice  him,  though 
he  would  have  been  then  and  always  the  last  to  allow 
this.  I  imagine  his  friends  realized  more  than  he,  that 
certain  delicate  but  vital  filaments  of  attachment  had 
frayed  and  parted  in  alien  air,  and  left  him  heart-loose 
as  he  had  not  been  before. 

I  do  not  know  whether  it  crossed  his  mind  after  the 
election  of  Hayes  that  he  might  be  offered  some  place 
abroad,  but  it  certainly  crossed  the  minds  of  some  of 
his  friends,  and  I  could  not  feel  that  I  was  acting  for 
myself  alone  when  I  used  a  family  connection  with  the 


President,  very  early  in  his  term,  to  let  him  know  that 
I  believed  Lowell  would  accept  a  diplomatic  mission.  1 
could  assure  him  that  I  was  writing  wholly  without 
Lowell's  privity  or  authority,  and  I  got  back  such  a 
letter  as  I  could  wish  in  its  delicate  sense  of  the  situa 
tion.  The  President  said  that  he  had  already  thought 
of  offering  Lowell  something,  and  he  gave  me  the 
pleasure,  a  pleasure  beyond  any  other  I  could  imagine, 
of  asking  Lowell  whether  he  wrould  accept  the  mission 
to  Austria.  I  lost  no  time  carrying  his  letter  to  Elm- 
wood,  where  I  found  Lowell  over  his  coffee  at  dinner. 
lie  saw  me  at  the  threshold,  and  called  to  me  through 
the  open  door  to  come  in,  arid  I  handed  him  the  letter, 
and  sat  down  at  table  while  he  ran  it  through.  When 
he  had  read  it,  he  gave  a  quick  "  Ah !"  and  threw  it 
over  the  length  of  the  table  to  Mrs.  Lowell.  She  read 
it  in  a  smiling  and  loyal  reticence,  as  if  she  would  not 
say  one  word  of  all  she  might  wish  to  say  in  urging  his 
acceptance,  though  I  could  see  that  she  was  intensely 
eager  for  it.  The  whole  situation  was  of  a  perfect  ISTew 
England  character  in  its  tacit  significance;  after  Low 
ell  had  taken  his  coffee  we  turned  into  his  study  with 
out  further  allusion  to  the  matter. 

A  day  or  two  later  he  came  to  my  house  to  say  that 
he  could  not  accept  the  Austrian  mission,  and  to  ask 
me  to  tell  the  President  so  for  him,  and  make  his 
acknowledgments,  which  he  would  also  write  himself. 
He  remained  talking  a  little  while  of  other  things,  and 
when  he  rose  to  go,  he  said  with  a  sigh  of  vague  reluc 
tance,  "  I  should  like  to  see  a  play  of  Calderon,"  as  if 
it  had  nothing  to  do  with  any  wish  of  his  that  could 
still  be  fulfilled.  "  Upon  this  hint  I  acted,"  and  in  due 
time  it  was  found  in  Washington,  that  the  gentleman 
who  had  been  offered  the  Spanish  mission  would  as  lief 
go  to  Austria,  and  Lowell  was  sent  to  Madrid. 

238 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

X 

When  we  met  in  London,  some  years  later,  he 
came  almost  every  afternoon  to  my  lodging,  and 
the  story  of  our  old-time  Cambridge  walks  began 
again  in  London  phrases.  There  were  not  the  vacant 
lots  and  outlying  fields  of  his  native  place,  but  we  made 
shift  with  the  vast,  simple  parks,  and  we  walked  on  the 
grass  as  we  could  not  have  done  in  an  American  park, 
and  were  glad  to  feel  the  earth  under  our  feet.  I  said 
how  much  it  was  like  those  earlier  tramps;  and  that 
pleased  him,  for  he  wished,  whenever  a  thing  delighted 
him,  to  find  a  Cambridge  quality  in  it. 

But  he  was  in  love  with  everything  English,  and 
was  determined  I  should  be  so  too,  beginning  with  the 
English  weather,  which  in  summer  cannot  be  over 
praised.  He  carried,  of  course,  an  umbrella,  but  he 
would  not  put  it  up  in  the  light  showers  that  caught  us 
at  times,  saying  that  the  English  rain  never  wetted  you. 
The  thick  short  turf  delighted  him;  he  would  scarcely 
allow  that  the  trees  were  the  worse  for  foliage  blighted 
by  a  vile  easterly  storm  in  the  spring  of  that  year.  The 
tender  air,  the  delicate  veils  that  the  moisture  in  it 
cast  about  all  objects  at  the  least  remove,  the  soft  colors 
of  the  flowers,  the  dull  blue  of  the  low  sky  showing 
through  the  rifts  of  the  dirty  white  clouds,  the  hover 
ing  pall  of  London  smoke,  were  all  dear  to  him,  and  he 
was  anxious  that  I  should  not  lose  anything  of  their 
charm. 

He  was  anxious  that  I  should  not  miss  the  value  of 
anything  in  England,  and  while  he  volunteered  that  the 
aristocracy  had  the  corruptions  of  aristocracies  every 
where,  he  insisted  upon  my  respectful  interest  in  it  be 
cause  it  was  so  historical.  Perhaps  there  was  a  touch  of 
irony  in  this  demand,  but  it  is  certain  that  he  was  very 

239 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

happy  in  England.  He  bad  come  of  the  age  when  a 
man  likes  smooth,  warm  keeping,  in  which  he  need 
make  no  struggle  for  his  comfort;  disciplined  and  ob 
sequious  service;  society,  perfectly  ascertained  within 
the  larger  society  which  we  call  civilization ;  and  in  an 
alien  environment,  for  which  be  was  in  no  wise  respon 
sible,  he  could  have  these  without  a  pang  of  the  self- 
reproach  which  at  home  makes  a  man  unhappy  amidst 
his  luxuries,  when  he  considers  their  cost  to  others. 
He  had  a  position  which  forbade  thought  of  unfairness 
in  the  conditions;  he  must  not  wake  because  of  the 
slave,  it  was  his  duty  to  sleep.  Besides,  at  that  time 
Lowell  needed  all  the  rest  he  could  get,  for  he  had  lately 
passed  through  trials  such  as  break  the  strength  of  men, 
arid  bow  them  with  premature  age.  He  was  living  alone 
in  his  little  house  in  Lowndes  Square,  and  Mrs.  Lowell 
was  in  the  country,  slowly  recovering  from  the  effects 
of  the  terrible  typhus  which  she  had  barely  survived  in 
Madrid.  He  was  yet  so  near  the  anguish  of  that  ex 
perience  that  he  told  me  he  had  still  in  his  nerves  the 
expectation  of  a  certain  agonized  cry  from  her  which 
used  to  rend  them.  But  he  said  he  had  adjusted  him 
self  to  this,  and  he  wont  on  to  speak  with  a  patience 
which  was  more  affecting  in  him  than  in  men  of  more 
phlegmatic  temperament,  of  how  we  were  able  to  adjust 
ourselves  to  all  our  trials  and  to  the  constant  presence 
of  pain.  He  said  he  was  never  free  of  a  certain  dis 
tress,  which  was  often  a  sharp  pang,  in  one  of  his 
shoulders,  but  his  physique  had  established  such  rela 
tions  with  it  that,  though  he  was  never  unconscious  of 
it,  he  was  able  to  endure  it  without  a  recognition  of  it 
as  suffering. 

He  seemed  to  me,  however,  very  well,  and  at  his  age 
of  sixty-three,  I  could  not  see  that  he  was  less  alert  and 
vigorous  than  lie  was  when  I  first  knew  him  in  Cam- 

240 


STUDIES   OF   LOWELL 

bridge.  He  had  the  same  brisk,  light  step,  and  though 
his  beard  was  well  whitened  and  his  auburn  hair  had 
grown  ashen  through  the  red,  his  face  had  the  fresh 
ness  and  his  eyes  the  clearness  of  a  young  man's.  T 
suppose  the  novelty  of  his  life  kept  him  from  thinking 
about  his  years ;  or  perhaps  in  contact  with  those  great, 
insenescent  Englishmen,  he  could  not  feel  himself  old. 
At  any  rate  he  did  not  once  speak  of  age,  as  he  used  to 
do  ten  years  earlier,  and  I,  then  half  through  my  forties, 
was  still  "  You  young  dog  "  to  him.  It  was  a  bright 
and  cheerful  renewal  of  the  early  kindliness  between 
us,  on  which  indeed  there  had  never  been  a  shadow,  ex 
cept  such  as  distance  throws.  He  wished  apparently  to 
do  everything  he  could  to  assure  us  of  his  personal  in 
terest  ;  and  we  were  amused  to  find  him  nervously  ap 
prehensive  of  any  purpose,  such  as  was  far  from  us,  to 
profit  by  him  officially.  He  betrayed  a  distinct  relief 
when  he  found  we  were  not  going  to  come  upon  him 
even  for  admissions  to  the  houses  of  parliament,  which 
we  were  to  see  by  means  of  an  English  acquaintance. 
Tie  had  not  perhaps  found  some  other  fellow-citizens  so 
considerate ;  he  dreaded  the  half-duties  of  his  place, 
like  presentations  to  the  queen,  and  complained  of  the 
cheap  ambitions  he  had  to  gratify  in  that  way. 

He  was  so  eager  to  have  me  like  England  in  every 
way,  and  seemed  so  fond  of  the  English,  that  I  thought 
it  best  to  ask  him  whether  he  minded  my  quoting,  in  a 
paper  about  Lexington,  which  I  was  just  then  going 
to  print  in  a  London  magazine,  some  humorous  lines 
of  his  expressing  the  mounting  satisfaction  of  an  imag 
inary  Yankee  story-teller  who  has  the  old  fight  terminate 
in  Lord  Percy's  coming 

"  To  hammer  stone  for  life  in  Concord  jail." 

It  had  occurred  to  me  that  it  might  possibly  em- 
241 


L1TEKAKY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

barrass  him  to  have  this  patriotic  picture  presented  to 
a  public  which  could  not  take  our  Fourth  of  July 
pleasure  in  it,  and  I  offered  to  suppress  it,  as  I  did 
afterwards  quite  for  literary  reasons.  He  said,  ISTo, 
let  it  stand,  and  let  them  make  the  worst  of  it;  and  I 
fancy  that  much  of  his  success  with  a  people  who  are 
not  gingerly  with  other  people's  sensibilities  came  from 
the  frankness  with  which  he  trampled  on  their  preju 
dice  when  he  chose.  He  said  he  always  told  them, 
when  there  was  question  of  such  things,  that  the  best 
society  he  had  ever  known  was  in  Cambridge,  Massa 
chusetts.  -  He  contended  that  the  best  English  was 
spoken  there ;  and  so  it  was,  when  he  spoke  it. 

We  were  in  London  out  of  the  season,  and  he  was 
sorry  that  he  could  not  have  me  meet  some  titles  who 
he  declared  had  found  pleasure  in  my  books ;  when  we 
returned  from  Italy  in  the  following  June,  he  was 
prompt  to  do  me  this  honor.  I  dare  say  he  wished  me 
to  feel  it  to  its  last  implication,  and  I  did  my  best,  but 
there  was  nothing  in  the  evening  I  enjoyed  so  much  as 
his  coming  up  to  Mrs.  Lowell,  at  the  close,  when  there 
was  only  a  title  or  two  left,  and  saying  to  her  as  he 
would  have  said  to  her  at  Elmwood,  where  she  would 
have  personally  planned  it,  "  Fanny,  that  was  a  fine 
dinner  you  gave  us."  Of  course,  this  was  in  a  tender 
burlesque;  but  it  remains  the  supreme  impression  of 
what  seemed  to  me  a  cloudlessly  happy  period  for 
Lowell.  His  wife  was  quite  recovered  of  her  long  suf 
fering,  and  was  again  at  the  head  of  his  house,  sharing 
in  his  pleasures,  and  enjoying  his  successes  for  his  sake ; 
successes  so  great  that  people  spoke  of  him  seriously, 
as  "  an  addition  to  society  "  in  London,  where  one  man 
more  or  less  seemed  like  a  drop  in  the  sea.  She  was  a 
woman  perfectly  of  the  New  England  type  and  tradi 
tion  :  almost  repellantly  shy  at  first,  and  almost  glacially 

242 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

cold  with  new  acquaintance,  but  afterwards  very  sweet 
and  cordial.  She  was  of  a  dark  beauty  with  a  regular 
face  of  the  Spanish  outline;  Lowell  was  of  an  ideal 
manner  towards  her,  and  of  an  admiration  which  deli 
cately  travestied  itself  and  which  she  knew  how  to  re 
ceive  with  smiling  irony.  After  her  death,  which  oc 
curred  while  he  was  still  in  England,  he  never  spoke  of 
her  to  me,  though  before  that  he  used  to  be  always 
bringing  her  name  in,  with  a  young  lover-like  fondness. 


XI 

In  the  hurry  of  the  London  season  I  did  not  see  so 
much  of  Lowell  on  our  second  sojourn  as  on  our  first, 
but  once  when  we  were  alone  in  his  study  there  was 
a  return  to  the  terms  of  the  old  meetings  in  Cambridge. 
He  smoked  his  pipe,  and  sat  by  his  fire  and  philoso 
phized  ;  and  but  for  the  great  London  sea  swirling  out 
side  and  bursting  through  our  shelter,  and  dashing  him 
with  notes  that  must  be  instantly  answered,  it  was  a 
very  fair  image  of  the  past.  He  wanted  to  tell  me 
about  his  coachman  whom  he  had  got  at  on  his  human 
side  with  great  liking  and  amusement,  and  there  was 
a  patient  gentleness  in  his  manner  with  the  footman 
who  had  to  keep  coming  in  upon  him  with  those  notes 
which  was  like  the  echo  of  his  young  faith  in  the 
equality  of  men.  But  he  always  distinguished  between 
the  simple  unconscious  equality  of  the  ordinary  Ameri 
can  and  its  assumption  by  a  foreigner.  He  said  he  did 
not  mind  such  an  American's  coming  into  his  house 
with  his  hat  on ;  but  if  a  German  or  Englishman  did  it, 
he  wanted  to  knock  it  off.  He  was  apt  to  be  rather 
punctilious  in  his  shows  of  deference  towards  others, 
and  at  one  time  he  practised  removing  his  own  hat  when 
he  went  into  shops  in  Cambridge.  It  must  have  mysti- 
"  243 


L1TEKAKY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

fied  the  Cambridge  salesmen,  and  I  doubt  if  he  kept 
it  up. 

With  reference  to  the  doctrine  of  his  young  poetry, 
the  fierce  and  the  tender  humanity  of  his  storm  and 
stress  period,  I  fancy  a  kind  of  baffle  in  Lowell,  which 
I  should  not  perhaps  find  it  easy  to  prove.  I  never 
knew  him  by  word  or  hint  to  renounce  this  doctrine, 
but  he  could  not  come  to  seventy  years  without  having 
seen  many  high  hopes  fade,  and  known  many  inspired 
prophecies  fail.  When  we  have  done  our  best  to  make 
the  world  over,  we  are  apt  to  be  dismayed  by  finding  it 
in  much  the  old  shape.  As  he  said  of  the  moral  govern 
ment  of  the  universe,  the  scale  is  so  vast,  and  a  little 
difference,  a  little  change  for  the  better,  is  scarcely  per 
ceptible  to  the  eager  consciousness  of  the  wholesale  re 
former.  But  with  whatever  sense  of  disappointment, 
of  doubt  as  to  his  own  deeds  for  truer  freedom  and  for 
better  conditions  I  believe  his  sympathy  was  still  with 
those  who  had  some  heart  for  hoping  and  striving.  I 
am  sure  that  though  he  did  not  agree  with  me  in  some 
of  my  own  later  notions  for  the  redemption  of  the  race, 
he  did  not  like  me  the  less  but  rather  the  more  because 
(to  my  own  great  surprise  I  confess)  I  had  now  and 
then  the  courage  of  my  convictions,  both  literary  and 
social. 

He  was  probably  most  at  odds  with  me  in  regard  to 
my  theories  of  fiction,  though  he  persisted  in  declaring 
his  pleasure  in  my  own  fiction.  He  was  in  fact,  by  nat 
ure  and  tradition,  thoroughly  romantic,  and  he  could 
not  or  would  not  suffer  realism  in  any  but  a  friend.  He 
steadfastly  refused  even  to  read  the  Russian  masters, 
to  his  immense  loss,  as  I  tried  to  persuade  him,  and 
even  among  the  modern  Spaniards,  for  whom  he  might 
have  had  a  sort  of  personal  kindness  from  his  love  of 
Cervantes,  he  chose  one  for  his  praise  the  least  worthy 

244 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

of  it,  and  bore  me  down  with  his  heavier  metal  in  argu 
ment  when  I  opposed  to  Alarcon's  f  actitiousness  the  de 
lightful  genuineness  of  Valdes.  Ibsen,  with  all  the 
Norwegians,  he  put  far  from  him;  he  would  no  more 
know  them  than  the  Kussians;  the  French  naturalists 
he  abhorred.  I  thought  him  all  wrong,  but  you  do  not 
try  improving  your  elders  when  they  have  come  to 
three  score  and  ten  years,  and  I  would  rather  have  had 
his  affection  unbroken  by  our  difference  of  opinion 
than  a  perfect  agreement.  Where  he  even  imagined 
that  this  difference  could  work  rne  harm,  he  was  anxious 
to  have  me  know  that  he  meant  me  none ;  and  he  was  at 
the  trouble  to  write  me  a  letter  when  a  Boston  paper 
had  perverted  its  report  of  what  he  said  in  a  public 
lecture  to  my  disadvantage,  and  to  assure  me  that  he 
had  not  me  in  mind.  When  once  he  had  given  his  lik 
ing,  he  could  not  bear  that  any  shadow  of  change  should 
seem  to  have  come  upon  him.  lie  had  a  most  beautiful 
and  endearing  ideal  of  friendship;  he  desired  to  af 
firm  it  and  to  reaffirm  it  as  often  as  occasion  offered,  and 
if  occasion  did  not  offer,  he  made  occasion.  It  did  not 
matter  what  you  said  or  did  that  contraried  him;  if 
he  thought  he  had  essentially  divined  you,  you  were 
still  the  same :  and  on  his  part  he  was  by  no  means  ex 
acting  of  equal  demonstration,  but  seemed  not  even  to 
wish  it. 

XII 

'After  he  was  replaced  at  London  by  a  minister  more 
immediately  representative  of  the  Democratic  adminis 
tration,  he  came  home.  lie  made  a  brave  show  of  not 
caring  to  have  remained  away,  but  in  truth  he  had  be 
come  very  fond  of  England,  where  he  had  made  so  many 
friends,  and  where  the  distinction  he  had,  in  that  com 
fortably  padded  environment,  was  .so  agreeable  to  him. 

245 


LITEKAEY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

It  would  have  been  like  him  to  have  secretly  hoped  that 
the  new  President  might  keep  him  in  London,  but  he 
never  betrayed  any  ignoble  disappointment,  and  he 
would  not  join  in  any  blame  of  him.  At  our  first  meet 
ing  after  he  came  home  he  spoke  of  the  movement  which 
had  made  Mr.  Cleveland  president,  and  said  he  sup 
posed  that  if  he  had  been  here,  he  should  have  been  in 
it.  All  his  friends  were,  he  added,  a  little  helplessly; 
but  he  seemed  not  to  dislike  my  saying  I  knew  one  of 
his  friends  who  was  not :  in  fact,  as  I  have  told,  he  never 
disliked  a  plump  difference — unless  he  disliked  the 
differer. 

For  several  years  he  went  back  to  England  every  sum 
mer,  and  it  was  not  until  he  took  up  his  abode  at  Elm- 
wood  again  that  he  spent  a  whole  year  at  home.  One 
winter  he  passed  at  his  sister's  home  in  Boston,  but 
mostly  he  lived  with  his  daughter  at  Southborough.  I 
have  heard  a  story  of  his  going  to  Elmwood  soon  after 
his  return  in  1885,  and  sitting  down  in  his  old  study, 
where  he  declared  with  tears  that  the  place  was  full  of 
ghosts.  But  four  or  five  years  later  it  was  well  for 
family  reasons  that  he  should  live  there ;  and  about  the 
same  time  it  happened  that  I  had  taken  a  house  for  the 
summer  in  his  neighborhood.  He  came  to  see  me,  and 
to  assure  me,  in  all  tacit  forms  of  his  sympathy  in  a 
sorrow  for  which  there  could  be  no  help ;  but  it  was  not 
possible  that  the  old  intimate  relations  should  be  re 
sumed.  The  affection  \vas  there,  as  much  on  his  side 
as  on  mine,  I  believe ;  but  he  was  now  an  old  man  and  I 
was  an  elderly  man,  and  we  could  not,  without  insincer 
ity,  approach  each  other  in  the  things  that  had  drawn 
us  together  in  earlier  and  happier  years.  His  course 
was  run ;  my  own,  in  which  he  had  taken  such  a  gener 
ous  pleasure,  could  scarcely  move  his  jaded  interest. 
His  life,  so  far  as  it  remained  to  him,  had  renewed  it- 

246 


STUDIES   OF   LOWELL 

self  in  other  air;  the  later  friendships  beyond  seas  suf 
ficed  him,  and  were  without  the  pang,  without  the  ef 
fort  that  must  attend  the  knitting  up  of  frayed  ties 
here. 

He  could  never  have  been  anything  but  American,  if 
he  had  tried,  and  he  certainly  never  tried;  but  he  cer 
tainly  did  not  return  to  the  outward  simplicities  of  his 
life  as  I  first  knew  it.  There  was  no  more  round-hat- 
and-sack-coat  business  for  him;  he  wore  a  frock  and  a 
high  hat,  and  whatever  else  was  rather  like  London 
than  Cambridge ;  I  do  not  know  but  drab  gaiters  some 
times  added  to  the  effect  of  a  gentleman  of  the  old 
school  which  he  now  produced  upon  the  witness.  Some 
fastidiousnesses  showed  themselves  in  him,  which  were 
not  so  surprising.  He  complained  of  the  American 
lower  class  manner;  the  conductor  and  cabman  would 
be  kind  to  you  but  they  would  not  be  respectful,  and 
he  could  not  see  the  fun  of  this  in  the  old  way.  Early 
in  our  acquaintance  he  rather  stupified  me  by  saying, 
"  I  like  you  because  you  don't  put  your  hands  on  me," 
and  I  heard  of  his  consenting  to  some  sort  of  reception 
in  those  last  years,  "  Yes,  if  they  won't  shake  hands." 

Ever  since  his  visit  to  Rome  in  1875  he  had  let  his 
heavy  mustache  grow  long  till  it  dropped  below  the  cor 
ners  of  his  beard,  which  was  now  almost  white ;  his  face 
had  lost  the  ruddy  hue  so  characteristic  of  him.  I 
fancy  he  was  then  ailing  with  premonitions  of  the  dis 
order  which  a  few  years  later  proved  mortal,  but  he 
still  bore  himself  with  sufficient  vigor,  and  he  walked 
the  distance  between  his  house  and  mine,  though  once 
when  I  missed  his  visit  the  family  reported  that  after 
he  came  in  he  sat  a  long  time  with  scarcely  a  word,  as 
if  too  weary  to  talk.  That  winter,  I  went  into  Boston 
to  live,  and  I  saw  him  only  at  infrequent  intervals, 
when  I  could  go  out  to  Elmwood.  At  such  times  I 

247 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

found  him  sitting  in  the  room  which  was  formerly  the 
drawing-room,  but  which  had  been  joined  with  his  study 
by  taking  away  the  partitions  beside  the  heavy  mass  of 
the  old  colonial  chimney.  lie  told  me  that  when  he 
was  a  new-born  babe,  the  nurse  had  carried  him  round 
this  chimney,  for  luck,  and  now  in  front  of  the  same 
hearth,  the  white  old  man  stretched  himself  in  an  easy- 
chair,  with  his  writing-pad  on  his  knees  and  his  books 
on  the  table  at  his  elbow,  and  was  willing  to  be  en 
treated  not  to  rise.  I  remember  the  sun  used  to  come 
in  at  the  eastern  windows  full  pour,  and  bathe  the  air 
in  its  warmth. 

He  always  hailed  me  gayly,  and  if  I  found  him  with 
letters  newly  come  from  England,  as  I  sometimes  did, 
he  glowed  and  sparkled  with  fresh  life.  He  wanted 
to  read  passages  from  those  letters,  he  wanted  to  talk 
about  their  writers,  and  to  make  me  feel  their  worth 
and  charm  as  he  did.  He  still  dreamed  of  going  back 
to  England  the  next  summer,  but  that  was  not  to  be. 
One  day  he  received  me  not  less  gayly  than  usual,  but 
with  a  certain  excitement,  and  began  to  tell  me  about 
an  odd  experience  he  had  had,  not  at  all  painful,  but 
wrhich  had  very  much  mystified  him.  He  had  since 
seen  the  doctor,  and  the  doctor  had  assured  him  that 
there  was  nothing  alarming  in  what  had  happened,  and 
in  recalling  this  assurance,  he  began  to  look  at  the  hu 
morous  aspects  of  the  case,  and  to  make  some  jokes 
about  it.  He  wished  to  talk  of  it,  as  men  do  of  their 
maladies,  and  very  fully,  and  I  gave  him  such  proof  of 
my  interest  as  even  inviting  him  to  talk  of  it  would 
convey.  In  spite  of  the  doctor's  assurance,  and  his 
joyful  acceptance  of  it,  I  doubt  if  at  the  bottom  of  his 
heart  there  was  not  the  stir  of  an  uneasy  misgiving; 
but  he  had  not  for  a  long  time  shown  himself  so  cheer 
ful. 

248 


STUDIES   OF  LOWELL 

It  was  the  beginning  of  the  end.  He  recovered  and 
relapsed,  and  recovered  again ;  but  never  for  long.  Late 
in  the  spring  I  came  out,  and  he  had  me  stay  to  dinner, 
which  was  somehow  as  it  used  to  be  at  two  o'clock ;  and 
after  dinner  we  went  out  on  his  lawn.  He  got  a  long- 
handled  spud,  and  tried  to  grub  up  some  dandelions 
which  he  found  in  his  turf,  but  after  a  moment  or  two 
he  threw  it  down,  and  put  his  hand  upon  his  back  with 
a  groan.  I  did  not  see  him  again  till  I  came  out  to 
take  leave  of  him  before  going  away  for  the  summer, 
and  then  I  found  him  sitting  on  the  little  porch  in  a 
western  corner  of  his  house,  with  a  volume  of  Scott 
closed  upon  his  finger.  There  were  some  other  people, 
and  our  meeting  was  with  the  constraint  of  their  pres 
ence.  It  was  natural  in  nothing  so  much  as  his  saying 
very  significantly  to  me,  as  if  he  knew  of  my  heresies 
concerning  Scott,  and  would  have  me  know  he  did  not 
approve  of  them,  that  there  was  nothing  he  now  found 
so  much  pleasure  in  as  Scott's  novels.  Another  friend, 
equally  heretical,  was  by,  but  neither  of  us  attempted 
to  gainsay  him.  Lowell  talked  very  little,  but  he  told 
of  having  been  a  walk  to  Beaver  Brook,  and  of  having 
wished  to  jump  from  one  stone  to  another  in  the  stream, 
and  of  having  had  to  give  it  up.  He  said,  without  com 
pleting  the  sentence,  If  it  had  come  to  that  with  him ! 
Then  he  fell  silent  again;  and  with  some  vain  talk  of 
seeing  him  when  I  came  back  in  the  fall,  I  went  away 
sick  at  heart.  I  was  not  to  see  him  again,  and  I  shall 
not  look  upon  his  like. 

I  am  aware  that  I  have  here  shown  him  from  this 
point  and  from  that  in  a  series  of  sketches  which  per 
haps  collectively  impart,  but  do  not  assemble  his  per 
sonality  in  one  impression.  He  did  not,  indeed,  make 
one  impression  upon  me,  but  a  thousand  impressions, 
which  I  should  seek  in  vain  to  embody  in  a  single  pre- 
249 


LITERAEY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

sentment.  What  I  have  cloudily  before  me  is  the 
vision  of  a  very  lofty  and  simple  soul,  perplexed,  and 
as  it  were  surprised  and  even  dismayed  at  the  complex 
ity  of  the  effects  from  motives  so  single  in  it,  but  es 
caping  always  to  a  clear  expression  of  what  was  noblest 
and  loveliest  in  itself  at  the  supreme  moments,  in  the 
divine  exigencies.  I  believe  neither  in  heroes  nor  in 
saints ;  but  I  believe  in  great  and  good  men,  for  I  have 
known  them,  and  among  such  men  Lowell  was  of  the 
richest  nature  I  have  known.  His  nature  was  not  al 
ways  serene  or  pellucid ;  it  was  sometimes  roiled  by  the 
currents  that  counter  and  cross  in  all  of  us ;  but  it  was 
without  the  least  alloy  of  insincerity,  and  it  was  never 
darkened  by  the  shadow  of  a  selfish  fear.  His  genius 
was  an  instrument  that  responded  in  affluent  harmony 
to  the  power  that  made  him  a  humorist  and  that  made 
him  a  poet,  and  appointed  him  rarely  to  be  quite  either 
alone. 


part  Bfgbtb 


T3EING  the  wholly  literary  spirit  I  was  when  I  went 
-*-^  to  make  my  home  in  Cambridge,  I  do  not  see  how 
I  could  well  have  been  more  content  if  I  had  found 
myself  in  the  Elysian  Fields  with  an  agreeable  eternity 
before  me.  At  twenty-nine,  indeed,  one  is  practically  im 
mortal,  and  at  that  age,  time  had  for  me  the  effect  of  an 
eternity  in  which  I  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  read  books 
and  dream  of  writing  them,  in  the  overflow  of  endless 
hours  from  my  work  with  the  manuscripts,  critical 
notices,  and  proofs  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly.  As  for  the 
social  environment  I  should  have  been  puzzled  if  given 
my  choice  among  the  elect  of  all  the  ages,  to  find  poets 
and  scholars  more  to  my  mind  than  those  still  in  the 
flesh  at  Cambridge  in  the  early  afternoon  of  the  nine 
teenth  century.  They  are  now  nearly  all  dead,  and  I 
can  speak  of  them  in  the  freedom  which  is  death's 
doubtful  favor  to  the  survivor;  but  if  they  were  still 
alive  I  could  say  little  to  their  offence,  unless  their  mod 
esty  was  hurt  with  my  praise. 


One  of  the  first  and  truest  of  our  Cambridge  friends 
was  that  exquisite  intelligence,  who,  in  a  world  where 
so  many  people  are  grotesquely  miscalled,  was  most 
fitly  named;  for  no  man  ever  kept  here  more  perfectly 

251 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

and  purely  the  heart  of  such  as  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  of  than  Francis  J.  Child.  He  was  then  in  his  prime, 
and  I  like  to  recall  the  outward  image  which  expressed 
the  inner  man  as  happily  as  his  name.  He  was  of  low 
stature  and  of  an  inclination  which  never  became  stout 
ness  ;  but  what  you  most  saw  when  you  saw  him  was  his 
face  of  consummate  refinement :  very  regular,  with  eyes 
always  glassed  by  gold-rimmed  spectacles,  a  straight, 
short,  most  sensitive  nose,  and  a  beautiful  mouth  with 
the  sweetest  smile  mouth  ever  wore,  and  that  was  as 
wise  and  shrewd  as  it  was  sweet.  In  a  time  when  ev 
ery  other  man  was  more  or  less  bearded  he  was  clean 
shaven,  and  of  a  delightful  freshness  of  coloring  which 
his  thick  sunny  hair,  clustering  upon  his  head  in  close 
rings,  admirably  set  off.  I  believe  he  never  became 
gray,  and  the  last  time  I  saw  him,  though  he  wa.'i 
broken  then  with  years  and  pain,  his  face  had  still  tho 
brightness  of  his  inextinguishable  youth. 

It  is  well  known  how  great  was  Professor  Child's 
scholarship  in  the  branches  of  his  Harvard  work;  and 
how  especially,  how  uniquely,  effective  it  was  in  the 
study  of  English  and  Scottish  balladry  to  which  he  gave 
so  many  years  of  his  life.  He  was  a  poet  in  his  nature, 
and  he  wrought  with  passion  as  well  as  knowledge  in 
the  achievement  of  as  monumental  a  task  as  any  Ameri 
can  has  performed,  But  he  might  have  been  indefinite 
ly  less  than  he  was  in  any  intellectual  wise,  and  yet 
been  precious  to  those  who  knew  him  for  the  gentleness 
and  the  goodness  which  in  him  were  protected  from 
misconception  by  a  final  dignity  as  delicate  and  as  in 
violable  as  that  of  Longfellow  himself. 

We  were  still  much  less  than  a  year  from  our  life  in 
Venice,  when  he  came  to  see  us  in  Cambridge,  and  in 
the  Italian  interest  which  then  commended  us  to  so 
many  fine  spirits  among  our  neighbors  we  found  our- 

252 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

selves  at  the  beginning  of  a  life-long  friendship  with 
him.  I  was  known  to  him  only  by  my  letters  from 
Venice,  which  afterwards  became  Venetian  Life, 
and  by  a  bit  of  devotional  verse  which  he  had  asked 
to  include  in  a  collection  he  was  making,  but  he  imme 
diately  gave  us  the  freedom  of  his  heart,  which  after 
wards  was  never  withdrawn.  In  due  time  he  imagined 
a  home-school,  to  which  our  little  one  was  asked,  and 
she  had  her  first  lessons  with  his  own  daughter  under 
his  roof.  These  things  drew  us  closer  together,  and  he 
was  willing  to  be  still  nearer  to  me  in  any  time  of 
trouble.  At  one  such  time  when  the  shadow  which 
must  some  time  darken  every  door,  hovered  at  ours,  he 
had  the  strength  to  make  me  face  it  and  try  to  realize, 
while  it  was  still  there,  that  it  was  not  cruel  and  not 
evil.  It  passed,  for  that  time,  but  the  sense  of  his  help 
remained ;  and  in  my  own  case  I  can  testify  of  the 
potent  tenderness  which  all  who  knew  him  must  have 
known  in  him.  But  in  bearing  my  witness  I  feel  ac 
cused,  almost  as  if  he  were  present,  by  his  fastidious 
reluctance  from  any  recognition  of  his  helpfulness. 
When  this  came  in  the  form  of  gratitude  taking  credit 
to  itself  in  a  pose  which  reflected  honor  upon  him  as 
the  architect  of  greatness,  he  was  delightfully  impa 
tient  of  it,  and  he  was  most  amusingly  dramatic  in  re 
producing  the  consciousness  of  certain  ineffectual  alum 
ni  who  used  to  overwhelm  him  at  Commencement  sol 
emnities  with  some  such  pompous  acknowledgment  as, 
"  Professor  Child,  all  that  I  have  become,  sir,  I  owe  to 
your  influence  in  my  college  career."  He  did,  with  de 
licious  mockery,  the  old-fashioned  intellectual  poseurs 
among  the  students,  who  used  to  walk  the  groves  of  Har 
vard  with  bent  head,  and  the  left  arm  crossing  the  back, 
while  the  other  lodged  its  hand  in  the  breast  of  the  high- 
buttoned  frock-coat ;  and  I  could  fancy  that  his  classes 

253 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

in  college  did  not  form  the  sunniest  exposure  for  young 
folly  and  vanity.  I  know  that  he  was  intolerant  of  any 
manner  of  insincerity,  and  no  flattery  could  take  him 
off  his  guard.  I  have  seen  him  meet  this  with  a  cut 
ting  phrase  of  rejection,  and  no  man  was  more  apt  at 
snubbing  the  patronage  that  offers  itself  at  times  to  all 
men.  13ut  mostly  he  wished  to  do  people  pleasure,  and 
he  seemed  always  to  be  studying  how  to  do  it;  as  for 
need,  I  am  sure  that  worthy  and  unworthy  want  had 
alike  the  way  to  his  heart. 

Children  were  always  his  friends,  and  they  repaid 
with  adoration  the  affection  which  he  divided  with  them 
and  with  his  flowers.  I  recall  him  in  no  moments  so 
characteristic  as  those  he  spent  in  making  the  little  ones 
laugh  out  of  their  hearts  at  his  drolling,  some  festive 
evening  in  his  house,  and  those  he  gave  to  sharing  with 
you  his  joy  in  his  gardening.  This,  I  believe,  began 
with  violets,  and  it  went  on  to  roses,  which  he  grew  in 
a  splendor  and  profusion  impossible  to  any  but  a  true 
lover  with  a  genuine  gift  for  them.  Like  Lowell,  he 
spent  his  summers  in  Cambridge,  and  in  the  afternoon, 
you  could  find  him  digging  or  pruning  among  his  roses 
with  an  ardor  which  few  caprices  of  the  weather  could 
interrupt.  He  would  lift  himself  from  their  ranks, 
which  he  scarcely  over-topped,  as  you  came  up  the  foot 
way  to  his  door,  and  peer  purblindly  across  at  you.  If 
he  knew  you  at  once,  he  traversed  the  nodding  and 
swaying  bushes,  to  give  you  the  hand  free  of  the  trowel 
or  knife ;  or  if  you  got  indoors  unseen  by  him  he  would 
come  in  holding  towards  you  some  exquisite  blossom 
that  weighed  down  the  tip  of  its  long  stem  with  a  suc 
cession  of  hospitable  obeisances. 

He  graced  with  unaffected  poetry  a  life  of  as  hard 
study,  of  as  hard  work,  and  as  varied  achievement  as 
any  I  have  known  or  read  of ;  and  he  played  with  gifts 

254 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

and  acquirements  such  as  in  no  great  measure  have 
made  reputations.  He  had  a  rare  and  lovely  humor 
which  could  amuse  itself  both  in  English  and  Italian 
with  such  an  airy  burletta  as  "  II  Pesceballo  "  (he  wrote 
it  in  Metastasian  Italian,  and  Lowell  put  it  in  libretto 
English)  ;  he  had  a  critical  sense  as  sound  as  it  was 
subtle  in  all  literature;  and  whatever  he  wrote  he  im 
bued  with  the  charm  of  a  style  finely  personal  to  him 
self.  His  learning  in  the  line  of  his  Harvard  teaching 
included  an  early  English  scholarship  unrivalled  in  his 
time,  and  his  researches  in  ballad  literature  left  no  cor 
ner  of  it  untouched.  I  fancy  this  part  of  his  study 
was  peculiarly  pleasant  to  him;  for  he  loved  simple 
and  natural  things,  and  the  beauty  which  he  found 
nearest  life.  At  least  he  scorned  the  pedantic  affecta 
tions  of  literary  superiority ;  and  he  used  to  quote  with 
joyous  laughter  the  swelling  exclamation  of  an  Italian 
critic  who  proposed  to  leave  the  summits  of  polite 
learning  for  a  moment,  with  the  cry,  "  Scendiamo  fra 
il  popolo!"  (Let  us  go  down  among  the  people.) 


II 

Of  course  it  was  only  so  hard  worked  a  man  who 
could  take  thought  and  trouble  for  another.  lie  once 
took  thought  for  me  at  a  time  when  it  was  very  im 
portant  to  me,  and  when  he  took  the  trouble  to  secure 
for  me  an  engagement  to  deliver  that  course  of  Lowell 
lectures  in  Boston,  which  I  have  said  Lowell  had  the 
courage  to  go  in  town  to  hear.  I  do  not  remember 
whether  Professor  Child  was  equal  to  so  much,  but  he 
would  have  been  if  it  were  necessary;  and  I  rather  re 
joice  now  in  the  belief  that  he  did  not  seek  quite  that 
martyrdom. 

He  had  done  more  than  enough  for  me,  but  he  had 


Of.fC 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

done  only  what  he  was  always  willing  to  do  for  others. 
In  the  form  of  a  favor  to  himself  he  brought  into  my 
life  the  great  happiness  of  intimately  knowing  Hjalmar 
Jljorth  Boyesen,  whom  he  had  found  one  summer  day 
among  the  shelves  in  the  Harvard  library,  and  found  to 
be  a  poet  and  an  intending  novelist.  I  do  not  remem 
ber  now  just  how  this  fact  imparted  itself  to  the  pro 
fessor,  but  literature  is  of  easily  cultivated  confidence 
in  youth,  and  possibly  the  revelation  was  spontaneous. 
At  any  rate,  as  a  susceptible  young  editor,  I  was  asked 
to  meet  my  potential  contributor  at  the  professor's  two 
o'clock  dinner,  and  when  we  came  to  coffee  in  the 
study,  Boyesen  took  from  the  pocket  nearest  his  heart 
a  chapter  of  Gunnar,  and  read  it  to  us. 

Perhaps  the  good  professor  who  brought  us  together 
had  plotted  to  have  both  novel  and  novelist  make  their 
impression  at  once  upon  the  youthful  sub-editor ;  but  at 
any  rate  they  did  not  fail  of  an  effect.  I  believe  it  was 
that  chapter  where  Gunnar  and  Ragnhild  dance  and 
sing  a  stev  together,  for  I  associate  with  that  far  happy 
time  the  rich  mellow  tones  of  the  poet's  voice  in  the 
poet's  verse.  These  were  most  characteristic  of  him, 
and  it  is  as  if  I  might  put  my  ear  against  the  ethereal 
wall  beyond  which  he  is  rapt  and  hear  them  yet. 

Our  meeting  was  on  a  lovely  afternoon  of  summer, 
and  the  odor  of  the  professor's  roses  stole  in  at  the  open 
windows,  and  became  part  of  the  gentle  event.  Boye 
sen  walked  home  with  me,  and  for  a  fortnight  after  I 
think  we  parted  only  to  dream  of  the  literature  which 
we  poured  out  upon  each  other  in  every  waking  mo 
ment.  I  had  just  learned  to  know  Bjornson's  stories, 
and  Boyesen  told  me  of  his  poetry  and  of  his  drama, 
which  in  even  measure  embodied  the  great  ISTorse  liter 
ary  movement,  and  filled  me  with  the  wonder  and  de 
light  of  that  noble  revolt  against  convention,  that  brave 

256 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

return  to  nature  and  the  springs  of  poetry  in  the  heart 
and  the  speech  of  the  common  people.  Literature  was 
Boyesen's  religion  more  than  the  Swedenborgian  phi 
losophy  in  which  we  had  both  been  spiritually  nur 
tured,  and  at  every  step  of  our  mounting  friendship  we 
found  ourselves  on  common  ground  in  our  worship  of 
it.  I  was  a  decade  his  senior,  but  at  thirty-five  I  was 
not  yet  so  stricken  in  years  as  not  to  be  able  fully  to  re 
joice  in  the  ardor  which  fused  his  whole  being  in  an  in 
candescent  poetic  mass.  I  have  known  no  man  who 
loved  poetry  more  generously  and  passionately;  and  I 
think  he  was  above  all  things  a  poet.  His  work  took  the 
shape  of  scholarship,  fiction,  criticism,  but  poetry  gave 
it  all  a  touch  of  grace  and  beauty.  Some  years  after 
this  first  meeting  of  ours  I  remember  a  pathetic  moment 
with  him,  when  I  asked  him  why  he  had  not  written 
any  verse  of  late,  and  he  answered,  as  if  still  in  sad 
astonishment  at  the  fact,  that  he  had  found  life  was  not 
all  poetry.  In  those  earlier  days  I  believe  he  really 
thought  it  was ! 

Perhaps  it  really  is,  and  certainly  in  the  course  of  a 
life  that  stretched  almost  to  half  a  century  Boyesen 
learned  more  and  more  to  see  the  poetry  of  the  every 
day  world  at  least  as  the  material  of  art.  He  did  bat 
tle  valiantly  for  that  belief  in  many  polemics,  which  I 
suppose  gave  people  a  sufficiently  false  notion  of  him; 
and  he  showed  his  faith  by  works  in  fiction  which  better 
illustrated  his  motive.  Gunnar  stands  at  the  beginning 
of  these  works,  and  at  the  farthest  remove  from  it  in 
matter  and  method  stands  The  Mammon  of  Unright 
eousness.  The  lovely  idyl  won  him  fame  and  friend 
ship,  and  the  great  novel  added  neither  to  him,  though 
he  had  put  the  experience  and  the  observation  of  his 
ripened  life  into  it.  Whether  it  is  too  late  or  too  early 
for  it  to  win  the  place  in  literature  which  it  merits  I 

257 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

do  not  know ;  but  it  always  seemed  to  me  the  very  spite 
of  fate  that  it  should  have  failed  of  popular  effect. 
Yet  I  must  own  that  it  has  so  failed,  and  I  own  this 
without  bitterness  towards  Gunnar,  which  embalmed 
the  spirit  of  his  youth  as  The  Mammon  of  Unright 
eousness  embodied  the  thought  of  his  manhood. 


Ill 

Tt  was  my  pleasure,  my  privilege,  to  bring  Gunnar 
before  the  public  as  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and 
to  second  the  author  in  many  a  struggle  with  the  strange 
idiom  he  had  cast  the  story  in.  The  proofs  went  back 
and  forth  between  us  till  the  author  had  profited  by  ev 
ery  hint  and  suggestion  of  the  editor.  He  was  quick 
to  profit  by  any  hint,  and  he  never  made  the  same  mis 
take  twice,  lie  lived  his  English  as  fast  as  he  learned 
it;  the  right  word  became  part  of  him;  and  he  put 
away  the  wrong  word  with  instant  and  final  rejection. 
He  had  not  learned  American  English  without  learning 
newspaper  English,  but  if  one  touched  a  phrase  of  it 
in  his  work,  he  felt  in  his  nerves,  which  are  the  ulti 
mate  arbiters  in  such  matters,  its  difference  from  true 
American  and  true  English.  It  was  wonderful  how 
apt  and  how  elect  his  diction  was  in  those  days;  it 
seemed  as  if  his  thought  clothed  itself  in  the  fittest 
phrase  without  his  choosing.  In  his  poetry  he  had  ex 
traordinary  good  fortune  from  the  first ;  his  mind  had 
an  apparent  affinity  with  what  was  most  native,  most 
racy  in  our  speech;  and  I  have  just  been  looking  over 
Gunnar  and  marvelling  anew  at  the  felicity  and  the 
beauty  of  his  phrasing. 

I  do  not  know  whether  those  who  read  his  books  stop 
much  to  consider  how  rare  his  achievement  was  in  the 
mere  means  of  expression.  Our  speech  is  rather  more 

258 


CAMBKIDGE   NEIGHBOES 

hospitable  than  most,  and  yet  I  can  remember  but  five 
other  writers  born  to  different  languages  who  have 
handled  English  with  anything  like  his  mastery.  Two 
Italians,  Kuffini,  the  novelist,  and  Gallenga,  the  jour 
nalist  ;  two  Germans,  Carl  Schurz  and  Carl  Hillebrand, 
and  the  Dutch  novelist  Maarten  Maartens,  have  some  of 
'them  equalled  but  none  of  them  surpassed  him.  Yet 
he  was  a  man  grown  when  he  began  to  speak  and  to 
write  English,  though  I  believe  he  studied  it  some 
what  in  Norway  before  he  came  to  America.  What 
English  he  knew  he  learned  the  use  of  here,  and  in  the 
measure  of  its  idiomatic  vigor  we  may  be  proud  of  it 
as  Americans. 

He  had-  least  of  his  native  grace,  I  think,  in  his  crit 
icism;  and  yet  as  a  critic  he  had  qualities  of  rare  tem 
perance,  acuteness,  and  knowledge.  He  had  very  de 
cided  convictions  in  literary  art;  one  kind  of  thing  he 
believed  was  good  and  all  other  kinds  less  good  down 
to  what  was  bad ;  but  he  was  not  a  bigot,  and  he  made 
allowances  for  art-in-error.  His  hand  fell  heavy  only 
upon  those  heretics  who  not  merely  denied  the  faith 
but  pretended  that  artifice  was  better  than  nature,  that 
decoration  was  more  than  structure,  that  make-believe 
was  something  you  could  live  by  as  you  live  by  truth. 
He  was  not  strongest,  however,  in  damnatory  criticism. 
His  spirit  was  too  large,  too  generous  to  dwell  in  that, 
and  it  rose  rather  to  its  full  height  in  his  appreciations 
of  the  great  authors  whom  he  loved,  and  whom  he  com 
mented  from  the  plenitude  of  his  scholarship  as  well 
as  from  his  delighted  sense  of  their  grandeur.  Here 
he  was  almost  as  fine  as  in  his  poetry,  and  only  less  fine 
than  in  his  more  fortunate  essays  in  fiction. 

After  Gunnar  he  was  a  long  while  in  striking  another 
note  so  true.     He  did  not  strike  it  again  till  he  wrote 
The  Mammon  of  Unrighteousness,  and  after  that  he 
is  259 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

was  sometimes  of  a  wandering  and  uncertain  touch. 
There  are  certain  stories  of  his  which  I  cannot  read 
without  a  painful  sense  of  their  inequality  not  only 
to  his  talent,  but  to  his  knowledge  of  human  nature,  and 
of  American  character.  He  understood  our  character 
quite  as  well  as  he  understood  our  language,  but  at  times 
he  seemed  not  to  do  so.  I  think  these  were  the  times 
when  he  was  overworked,  and  ought  to  have  been  resting 
instead  of  writing.  In  such  fatigue  one  loses  command 
of  alien  words,  alien  situations ;  and  in  estimating  Boy- 
esen's  achievements  we  must  never  forget  that  he  was 
born  strange  to  our  language  and  to  our  life.  In  Gun- 
nar  he  handled  the  one  with  grace  and  charm;  in  his 
great  novel  he  handled  both  with  masterly  strength.  I 
call  The  Mammon  of  Unrighteousness  a  great  novel, 
and  I  am  quite  willing  to  say  that  I  know  few  novels 
by  born  Americans  that  surpass  it  in  dealing  with 
[American  types  and  conditions.  It  has  the  vast 
horizon  of  the  masterpieces  of  fictions;  its  mean 
ings  are  not  for  its  characters  alone,  but  for  every  read 
er  of  it ;  when  you  close  the  book  the  story  is  not  at  an 
end. 

I  have  a  pang  in  praising  it,  for  I  remember  that 
my  praise  cannot  please  him  any  more.  But  it  was  a 
book  worthy  the  powrers  which  could  have  given  us  yet 
greater  tilings  if  they  had  not  been  spent  on  lesser 
tilings.  Boyesen  could  "  toil  terribly,"  but  for  his  fame 
he  did  not  always  toil  wisely,  though  he  gave  himself  as 
utterly  in  his  unwise  work  as  in  his  best ;  it  was  always 
the  best  he  could  do.  Several  years  after  our  first  meet 
ing  in  Cambridge,  he  went  to  live  in  ISTew  York,  a  city 
where  money  counts  for  more  and  goes  for  less  than  in 
any  other  city  of  the  world,  and  he  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  to  write  more  and  more  when  he  should 
have  written  less  and  less.  He  never  wrote  anything 

260 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

that  was  not  worth  reading,  but  he  wrote  too  mucE  for 
one  who  was  giving  himself  with  all  his  conscience  to  his 
academic  work  in  the  university  honored  by  his  gifts 
and  his  attainments,  and  was  lecturing  far  and  near  in 
the  vacations  which  should  have  been  days  and  weeks 
and  months  of  leisure.  The  wonder  is  that  even  such 
a  stock  of  health  as  his  could  stand  the  strain  so  long, 
but  he  had  no  vices,  and  his  only  excesses  were  in  the 
direction  of  the  work  which  he  loved  so  well.  When  a 
man  adds  to  his  achievements  every  year,  we  are  apt 
to  forget  the  things  he  has  already  done;  and  I  think 
it  well  to  remind  the  reader  that  Boyesen,  who  died  at 
forty-eight,  had  written,  besides  articles,  reviews,  and 
lectures  unnumbered,  four  volumes  of  scholarly  criti 
cism  on  German  and  Scandinavian  literature,  a  volume 
of  literary  and  social  essays,  a  popular  history  of  Nor 
way,  a  volume  of  poems,  twelve  volumes  of  fiction,  and 
four  books  for  boys. 

Boyesen's  energies  were  inexhaustible.  He  was  not 
content  to  be  merely  a  scholar,  merely  an  author;  he 
wished  to  be  an  active  citizen,  to  take  his  part  in  honest 
politics,  and  to  live  for  his  day  in  things  that  most  men 
of  letters  shun.  His  experience  in  them  helped  him  to 
know  American  life  better  and  to  appreciate  it  more 
justly,  both  in  its  good  and  its  evil;  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact  he  knew  us  very  well.  His  acquaintance  with 
us  had  been  wide  and  varied  beyond  that  of  most  of  our 
literary  men,  and  touched  many  aspects  of  our  civiliza 
tion  which  remain  unknown  to  most  Americans.  When 
he  died  he  had  been  a  journalist  in  Chicago,  and  a  teach 
er  in  Ohio ;  he  had  been  a  professor  in  Cornell  Univer 
sity  and  a  literary  free  lance  in  ]STew  York ;  and  every 
where  his  eyes  and  ears  had  kept  themselves  open.  As 
a  teacher  he  learned  to  know  the  more  fortunate  or  the 
more  ambitious  of  our  youth,  and  as  a  lecturer  his 

2G1 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

knowledge  was  continually  extending  itself  among  all 
ages  and  classes  of  Americans. 

He  was  through  and  through  a  Norseman,  but  he  was 
none  the  less  a  very  American.  Between  Norsk  and 
Yankee  there  is  an  affinity  of  spirit  more  intimate  than 
the  ties  of  race.  Both  have  the  common-sense  view  of 
life;  both  are  unsentimental.  When  Boyesen  told  me 
that  among  the  Norwegians  men  never  kissed  each  other, 
as  the  Germans,  and  the  Frenchmen,  and  the  Italians 
do,  I  perceived  that  we  stood  upon  common  ground. 
When  he  explained  the  democratic  character  of  society 
in  Norway,  I  could  well  understand  how  he  should  find 
us  a  little  behind  his  own  countrymen  in  the  practice,  if 
not  the  theory  of  equality,  though  they  lived  under  a 
king  and  we  under  a  president.  But  he  was  proud  of 
his  American  citizenship ;  he  knew  all  that  it  meant,  at 
its  best,  for  humanity.  He  divined  that  the  true  ex 
pression  of  America  was  not  civic,  not  social,  but  domes 
tic  almost,  and  that  the  people  in  the  simplest  homes,  or 
those  who  remained  in  the  tradition  of  a  simple  home 
life,  were  the  true  Americans  as  yet,  whatever  the  fut 
ure  Americans  might  be. 

When  I  first  knew  him  he  was  chafing  with  the  im 
patience  of  youth  and  ambition  at  what  he  thought  his 
exile  in  the  West.  There  was,  to  be  sure,  a  difference 
between  Urbana,  Ohio,  and  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
and  he  realized  the  difference  in  the  extreme  and  per 
haps  beyond  it.  I  tried  to  make  him  believe  that  if  a 
man  had  one  or  two  friends  anywhere  who  loved  letters 
and  sympathized  with  him  in  his  literary  attempts,  it 
was  incentive  enough ;  but  of  course  he  wished  to  be  in 
the  centres  of  literature,  as  we  all  do ;  and  he  never  was 
content  until  he  had  set  his  face  and  his  foot  Eastward. 
It  was  a  great  step  for  him  from  the  Swedenborgian 
school  at  Urbana  to  the  young  university  at  Ithaca ;  and 

262 


CAMBEIDQE   NEIGHBORS 

I  remember  his  exultation  in  making  it.  But  he  could 
not  rest  there,  and  in  a  few  years  he  resigned  his  profes 
sorship,  and  came  to  New  York,  where  he  entered  high- 
heartedly  upon  the  struggle  with  fortune  which  ended 
in  his  appointment  in  Columbia. 

New  York  is  a  mart  and  not  a  capital,  in  literature 
as  well  as  in  other  things,  and  doubtless  he  increasingly 
felt  this.  I  know  that  there  came  a  time  when  he  no 
longer  thought  the  West  must  be  exile  for  a  literary 
man;  and  his  latest  visits  to  its  summer  schools  as  a 
lecturer  impressed  him  with  the  genuineness  of  the  in 
terest  felt  there  in  culture  of  all  kinds.  He  spoke  of 
this,  with  a  due  sense  of  what  was  pathetic  as  well  as 
what  was  grotesque  in  some  of  its  manifestations;  and 
I  think  that  in  reconciling  himself  to  our  popular  crude- 
ness  for  the  sake  of  our  popular  earnestness,  he  com 
pleted  his  naturalization,  in  the  only  sense  in  which 
our  citizenship  is  worth  having. 

I  do  not  wish  to  imply  that  he  forgot  his  native  land, 
or  ceased  to  love  it  proudly  and  tenderly.  He  kept  for 
Norway  the  fondness  which  the  man  sitting  at  his  own 
hearth  feels  for  the  home  of  his  boyhood.  He  was  of 
good  family;  his  people  were  people  of  substance  and 
condition,  and  he  could  have  had  an  easier  life  there 
than  here.  He  could  have  won  even  wider  fame,  and 
doubtless  if  he  had  remained  in  Norway,  he  would  have 
been  one  of  that  group  of  great  Norwegians  who  have 
given  their  little  land  renown  surpassed  by  that  of  no 
other  in  the  modern  republic  of  letters.  The  name  of 
Boyesen  would  have  been  set  with  the  names  of  Bjorn- 
son,  of  Ibsen,  of  Kielland,  and  of  Lie.  But  when  once 
he  had  seen  America  (at  the  wish  of  his  father,  who  had 
visited  the  United  States  before  him),  he  thought  only 
of  becoming  an  American.  When  I  first  knew  him  he 
was  full  of  the  poetry  of  his  mother-land ;  his  talk  was 

263 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

of  fjords  and  glaciers,  of  firs  and  birches,  of  hulders  and 
nixies,  of  housemen  and  gaardsmen ;  but  he  was  glad 
to  be  here,  and  I  think  he  never  regretted  that  he  had 
cast  his  lot  with  us.  Always,  of  course,  he  had  the  deep 
est  interest  in  his  country  and  countrymen.  He  stood 
the  friend  of  every  Norwegian  who  came  to  him  in  want 
or  trouble,  and  they  came  to  him  freely  and  frequently. 
He  sympathized  strongly  with  Norway  in  her  quarrel 
with  Sweden,  arid  her  wish  for  equality  as  well  as  au 
tonomy;  and  though  he  did  not  go  all  lengths  with  the 
national  party,  he  was  decided  in  his  feeling  that  Swe 
den  was  unjust  to  her  sister  kingdom,  and  strenuous 
for  the  principles  of  the  Norwegian  leaders. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  poetry  was  what  his  ardent  spirit 
mainly  meditated  in  that  hour  when  I  first  knew  him 
in  Cambridge,  before  we  had  either  of  us  grown  old 
and  sad,  if  not  wise.  He  overflowed  with  it,  and  he 
talked  as  little  as  he  dreamed  of  anything  else  in  the 
vast  half-summer  we  spent  together.  He  was  constant 
ly  at  my  house,  where  in  an  absence  of  my  family  I  was 
living  bachelor,  and  where  we  sat  indoors  and  talked, 
or  sauntered  outdoors  and  talked,  with  our  heads  in  a 
cloud  of  fancies,  not  unmixed  with  the  mosquitoes  of 
Cambridge :  if  I  could  have  back  the  fancies,  I  would  be 
willing  to  have  the  mosquitoes  with  them.  He  looked 
the  poetry  he  lived :  his  eyes  were  the  blue  of  sunlit 
fjords;  his  brown  silken  hair  was  thick  on  the  crown 
which  it  later  abandoned  to  a  scholarly  baldness;  his 
soft,  red  lips  half  hid  a  boyish  pout  in  the  youthful 
beard  and  mustache.  He  was  short  of  stature,  but  of  a 
stalwart  breadth  of  frame,  and  his  voice  was  of  a  pe 
culiar  and  endearing  quality,  indescribably  mellow  and 
tender  when  he  read  his  verse. 

I  have  hardly  the  right  to  dwell  so  long  upon  him 
here,  for  he  was  only  a  sojourner  in  Cambridge,  but 

264 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

the  memory  of  that  early  intimacy  is  too  much  for  my 
sense  of  proportion.  As  I  have  hinted,  our  in 
timacy  was  renewed  afterwards,  when  I  too  came  to 
live  in  ~Ne\v  York,  where  as  long  as  he  was  in  this  doles 
lome,  he  hardly  let  a  week  go  by  without  passing  a  long 
evening  with  me.  Our  talk  was  still  of  literature  and 
life,  but  more  of  life  than  of  literature,  and  we  seldom 
spoke  of  those  old  times.  I  still  found  him  true  to  the 
ideals  which  had  clarified  themselves  to  both  of  us  as 
the  duty  of  unswerving  fealty  to  the  real  thing  in  what 
ever  we  did.  This  we  felt,  as  we  had  felt  it  long  before, 
to  be  the  sole  source  of  beauty  and  of  art,  and  we  warm 
ed  ourselves  at  each  other's  hearts  in  our  devotion  to  it, 
amidst  a  misunderstanding  environment  which  we  did 
not  characterize  by  so  mild  an  epithet.  Boyesen,  in 
deed,  out-realisted  me,  in  the  polemics  of  our  aesthetics, 
and  sometimes  when  an  unbeliever  was  by,  I  willingly 
left  to  my  friend  the  affirmation  of  our  faith,  not  with 
out  some  quaking  at  his  unsparing  strenuousness  in  dis 
ciplining  the  heretic.  But  now  that  ardent  and  active 
soul  is  Elsewhere,  and  I  have  ceased  even  to  expect  the 
ring,  which,  making  itself  heard  at  the  late  hour  of  his 
coming,  I  knew  always  to  be  his  and  not  another's.  That 
mechanical  expectation  of  those  who  will  come  no  more 
is  something  terrible,  but  when  even  that  ceases,  we 
know  the  irreparability  of  our  loss,  and  begin  to  realize 
how  much  of  ourselves  they  have  taken  with  them. 


IV 

It  was  some  years  before  the  Boyesen  summer,  which' 
was  the  fourth  or  fifth  of  our  life  in  Cambridge,  that  I 
made  the  acquaintance  of  a  man,  very  much  my  senior, 
who  remains  one  of  the  vividest  personalities  in  my 
recollection.  I  speak  of  him  in  this  order  perhaps  be- 

265 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

cause  of  an  obscure  association  with  Boyesen  through 
their  religious  faith,  which  was  also  mine.  But  Henry 
James  was  incommensurably  more  Swedenborgian  than 
either  of  us :  he  lived  and  thought  and  felt  Swedenborg 
with  an  entirety  and  intensity  far  beyond  the  mere  as 
sent  of  other  men.  He  did  not  do  this  in  any  stupidly 
exclusive  way,  but  in  the  most  luminously  inclusive 
way,  with  a  constant  reference  of  these  vain  mundane 
shadows  to  the  spiritual  realities  from  which  they  pro 
ject.  His  piety,  which  sometimes  expressed  itself  in 
terms  of  alarming  originality  and  freedom,  was  too 
large  for  any  ecclesiastical  limits,  and  one  may  learn 
from  the  books  which  record  it,  how  absolutely  indi 
vidual  his  interpretations  of  Swedenborg  were.  Clari 
fications  they  cannot  be  called,  and  in  that  other  world 
whose  substantial  verity  was  the  inspiration  of  his  life 
here,  the  two  sages  may  by  this  time  have  met  and 
agreed  to  differ  as  to  some  points  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
Seer.  In  such  a  case,  I  cannot  imagine  the  apostle 
giving  way ;  and  I  do  not  say  he  would  be  wrong  to  in 
sist,  but  I  think  he  might  now  be  willing  to  allow  that 
the  exegetic  pages  which  sentence  by  sentence  were  so 
brilliantly  suggestive,  had  sometimes  a  collective  opaci 
ty  which  the  most  resolute  vision  could  not  penetrate. 
He  put  into  this  dark  wisdom  the  most  brilliant  in 
telligence  ever  brought  to  the  service  of  his  mystical 
faith ;  he  lighted  it  up  with  flashes  of  the  keenest  wit 
and  bathed  it  in  the  glow  of  a  lambent  humor,  so  that 
it  is  truly  wonderful  to  me  how  it  should  remain  so 
unintelligible.  But  I  have  only  tried  to  read  certain 
of  his  books,  and  perhaps  if  I  had  persisted  in  the 
effort  I  might  have  found  them  all  as  clear  at  last  as 
the  one  which  seems  to  me  the  clearest,  and  is  certainly 
most  encouragingly  suggestive:  I  mean  the  one  called 
Society  the  Redeemed  Form  of  Man. 

266 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

He  had  his  whole  being  in  his  belief ;  it  had  not  only 
liberated  him  from  the  bonds  of  the  Calvinistic  theology 
in  which  his  youth  was  trammelled,  but  it  had  secured 
him  against  the  conscious  ethicism  of  the  prevailing 
Unitarian  doctrine  which  supremely  worshipped  Con 
duct  ;  and  it  had  colored  his  vocabulary  to  such  strange 
effects  that  he  spoke  of  moral  men  with  abhorrence,  as 
more  hopelessly  lost  than  sinners.  Any  one  whose 
sphere  tempted  him  to  recognition  of  the  foibles  of 
others,  he  called  the  Devil ;  but  iii  spite  of  his  perception 
of  such  diabolism,  he  was  rather  fond  of  yielding  to  it, 
for  he  had  a  most  trenchant  tongue.  I  myself  once  fell 
under  his  condemnation  as  the  Devil,  by  having  too 
plainly  shared  his  joy  in  his  characterization  of  certain 
f ellow-meii ;  perhaps  a  group  of  Bostonians  from  whom 
he  had  just  parted  and  whose  reciprocal  pleasure  of 
themselves  he  presented  in  the  image  of  "  simmering  in 
their  own  fat  and  putting  a  nice  brown  on  each  other." 

Swedenborg  himself  he  did  not  spare  as  a  man.  He 
thought  that  very  likely  his  life  had  those  lapses  in  it 
which  some  of  his  followers  deny ;  and  he  regarded  him 
on  the  a.'sthetical  side  as  essentially  commonplace,  and 
as  probably  chosen  for  his  prophetic  function  just  be 
cause  of  his  imaginative  nullity :  his  tremendous  revela 
tions  could  be  the  more  distinctly  and  unmistakably  in 
scribed  upon  an  intelligence  of  that  sort,  which  alone 
could  render  again  a  strictly  literal  report  of  them. 

As  to  some  other  sorts  of  believers  who  thought  they 
had  a  special  apprehension  of  the  truth,  he  had  no 
mercy  upon  them  if  they  betrayed,  however  innocently, 
any  self-complacency  in  their  possession.  I  went  one 
evening  to  call  upon  him  with  a  dear  old  Shaker  elder, 
who  had  the  misfortune  to  say  that  his  people  believed 
themselves  to  be  living  the  angelic  life.  James  fast 
ened  upon  him  with  the  suggestion  that  according  to 

267 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Swedenborg  the  most  celestial  angels  were  unconscious 
of  their  own  perfection,  and  that  if  the  Shakers  felt 
they  were  of  angelic  condition  they  were  probably  the 
sport  of  the  hells.  I  was  very  glad  to  get  my  poor  old 
friend  off  alive,  and  to  find  that  he  was  not  even  aware 
of  being  cut  asunder:  I  did  not  invite  him  to  shake 
himself. 

With,  spiritualists  James  had  little  or  no  sympathy; 
he  was  not  so  impatient  of  them  as  the  Swedenborgians 
commonly  are,  and  he  probably  acknowledged  a  measure 
of  verity  in  the  spiritistic  phenomena ;  but  he  seemed 
rather  incurious  concerning  them,  and  he  must  have  re 
garded  them  as  superfluities  of  naughtiness,  mostly; 
as  emanations  from  the  hells.  His  powerful  and  pene 
trating  intellect  interested  itself  with  all  social  and  civil 
facts  through  his  religion.  He  was  essentially  religious, 
but  he  was  very  consciously  a  citizen,  with  most  decided 
opinions  upon  political  questions.  My  own  darkness 
as  to  anything  like  social  reform  was  then  so  dense  that 
I  cannot  now  be  clear  as  to  his  feeling  in  such  matters, 
but  I  have  the  impression  that  it  was  far  more  radical 
than  I  could  understand.  He  was  of  a  very  merciful 
mind  regarding  things  often  held  in  pitiless  condemna 
tion,  but  of  charity,  as  it  is  commonly  understood,  he 
had  misgivings.  He  would  never  have  turned  away 
from  him  that  asketh;  but  he  spoke  with  regret  of  some 
of  his  benefactions  in  the  past,  large  gifts  of  money  to 
individuals,  which  he  now  thought  had  done  more  harm 
than  good. 

I  never  knew  him  to  judge  men  by  the  society  scale. 
He  was  most  human  in  his  relations  with  others,  and 
was  in  correspondence  with  all  sorts  of  people  seeking 
light  and  help;  he  answered  their  letters  and  tried  to 
instruct  them,  and  no  one  was  so  low  or  weak  but  he  or 
she  could  reach  him  on  his  or  her  own  level,  though  he 

268 


CAMBEIDGE   NEIGHBOES 

had  his  humorous  perception  of  their  foibles  and  disa 
bilities;  and  he  had  that  keen  sense  of  the  grotesque 
which  often  goes  with  the  kindliest  nature.  He  told  of 
his  dining,  early  in  life,  next  a  fellow-man  from  Cape 
Cod  at  the  Astor  House,  where  such  a  man  could  seldom 
have  found  himself.  When  they  were  served  with  meat 
this  neighbor  asked  if  he  would  mind  his  putting  his 
fat  on  James's  plate :  he  disliked  fat.  James  said  that 
he  considered  the  request,  and  seeing  no  good  reason 
against  it,  consented. 

He  could  be  cruel  with  his  tongue  when  he  fancied 
insincerity  or  pretence,  and  then  cruelly  sorry  for  the 
hurt  he  gave.  He  was  indeed  tremulously  sensitive, 
not  only  for  himself  but  for  others,  and  would  offer 
atonement  far  beyond  the  measure  of  the  offence  he 
supposed  himself  to  have  given. 

At  all  times  he  thought  originally  in  words  of  delight 
ful  originality,  which  painted  a  fact  with  the  greatest 
vividness.  Of  a  person  who  had  a  nervous  twitching 
of  the  face,  and  who  wished  to  call  up  a  friend  to  them, 
he  said,  "  He  spasmed  to  the  fellow  across  the  room, 
and  introduced  him."  His  written  style  had  traits  of 
the  same  bold  adventurousness,  but  it  was  his  speech 
which  was  most  captivating.  As  I  write  of  him  I  see 
him  before  me :  his  white  bearded  face,  with  a  kindly  in 
tensity  which  at  first  glance  seemed  fierce,  the  mouth 
humorously  shaping  the  mustache,  the  eyes  vague  be 
hind  the  glasses;  his  sensitive  hand  gripping  the  stick 
on  which  he  rested  his  weight  to  ease  it  from  the  arti 
ficial  limb  he  wore. 


The  Goethean  face  and  figure  of  Louis  Agassiz  were 
in  those  days  to  be  seen  in  the  shady  walks  of  Cambridge 
to  which  for  me  they  lent  a  Weimarish  quality,  in  the 

269 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

degree  that  in  Weimar  itself  a  few  years  ago,  I  felt  a 
quality  of  Cambridge.  Agassiz,  of  course,  was  Swiss 
and  Latin,  and  not  Teutonic,  but  he  was  of  the  Conti 
nental  European  civilization,  and  was  widely  different 
from  the  other  Cambridge  men  in  everything  but  love 
of  the  place.  "  He  is  always  an  Europaer"  said  Low 
ell  one  day,  in  distinguishing  concerning  him ;  and  for 
any  one  who  had  tasted  the  flavor  of  the  life  beyond  the 
ocean  and  the  channel,  this  had  its  charm.  Yet  he  was 
extremely  fond  of  his  adoptive  compatriots,  and  no  alien 
born  had  a  truer  or  tenderer  sense  of  New  England 
character.  I  have  an  idea  that  no  one  else  of  his  day 
could  have  got  so  much  money  for  science  out  of  the 
General  Court  of  Massachusetts ;  and  I  have  heard  him 
speak  with  the  wisest  and  warmest  appreciation  of  the 
hard  material  from  which  he  was  able  to  extract  this 
treasure.  The  legislators  who  voted  appropriations 
for  his  Museum  and  his  other  scientific  objects  were  not 
usually  lawyers  or  professional  men,  with  the  perspec 
tives  of  a  liberal  education,  but  were  hard-fisted  farm 
ers,  who  had  a  grip  of  the  State's  money  as  if  it  were 
their  own,  and  yet  gave  it  with  intelligent  munificence. 
They  understood  that  he  did  not  want  it  for  himself,  and 
had  no  interested  aim  in  getting  it ;  they  knew  that,  as 
he  once  said,  he  had  no  time  to  make  money,  and  wished 
to  use  it  solely  for  the  advancement  of  learning;  and 
with  this  understanding  they  were  ready  to  help  'him 
generously.  He  compared  their  liberality  with  that  of 
kings  and  princes,  when  these  patronized  science,  with 
a  recognition  of  the  superior  plebeian  generosity.  It 
was  on  the  veranda  of  his  summer  house  at  Nahant, 
while  he  lay  in  the  hammock,  talking  of  this,  that  I 
heard  him  refer  also  to  the  offer  which  Napoleon  III. 
had  made  him,  inviting  him  upon  certain  splendid  con 
ditions  to  come  to  Paris  after  he  had  established  himself 

270 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

in  Cambridge.  He  said  that  he  had  not  come  to  Amer 
ica  without  going  over  every  such  possibility  in  his  own 
mind,  and  deciding  beforehand  against  it.  He  was  a 
republican,  by  nationality  and  by  preference,  and  was 
entirely  satisfied  with  his  position  and  environment  in 
New  England. 

Outside  of  his  scientific  circle  in  Cambridge  he  was 
more  friends  with  Longfellow  than  with  any  one  else, 
I  believe,  and  Longfellow  told  me  how,  after  the  doctors 
had  condemned  Agassiz  to  inaction,  on  account  of  his 
failing  health  he  had  broken  down  in  his  friend's  study, 
and  wept  like  an  Europaer,  and  lamented,  "  I  shall 
never  finish  my  work!"  Some  papers  which  he  had 
begun  to  write  for  the  Magazine,  in  contravention  of  the 
Darwinian  theory,  or  part  of  it,  which  it  is  known 
Agassiz  did  not  accept,  remained  part  of  the  work  which 
he  never  finished.  After  his  death,  I  wished  Professor 
Jeffries  Wyman  to  write  of  him  in  the  Atlantic,  but  he 
excused  himself  on  account  of  his  many  labors,  and  then 
he  voluntarily  spoke  of  Agassiz's  methods,  which  he 
agreed  with  rather  than  his  theories,  being  himself  thor 
oughly  Darwinian.  I  think  he  said  Agassiz  was  the  first 
to  imagine  establishing  a  fact  not  from  a  single  example, 
but  from  examples  indefinitely  repeated.  If  it  was  a 
question  of  something  about  robins  for  instance,  he 
would  have  a  hundred  robins  examined  before  he  would 
receive  an  appearance  as  a  fact. 

Of  course  no  preconception  or  prepossession  of  his 
own  was  suffered  to  bar  his  way  to  the  final  truth  he 
was  seeking,  and  he  joyously  renounced  even  a  con 
clusion  if  he  found  it  mistaken.  I  do  not  know  whether 
Mrs.  Agassiz  has  put  into  her  interesting  life  of  him,  a 
delightful  story  which  she  told  me  about  him.  He  came 
to  her  beaming  one  day,  and  demanded,  "  You  know 
I  have  always  held  such  and  such  an  opinion  about  a 

271 


LITEKAEY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

certain  group  of  fossil  fishes  ?"  "  Yes,  yes !"  "  Well, 
I  have  just  been  reading  -  — 's  new  book,  and  he  has 
shown  me  that  there  isn't  the  least  truth  in  my  theory" ; 
and  he  burst  into  a  laugh  of  unalloyed  pleasure  in  re 
linquishing  his  error. 

I  could  touch  science  at  Cambridge  only  on  its  liter 
ary  and  social  side,  of  course,  and  my  meetings  with 
lAgassiz  were  not  many.  I  recall  a  dinner  at  his  house 
to  Mr.  Bret  Harte,  when  the  poet  came  on  from  Cali 
fornia,  and  Agassiz  approached  him  over  the  coffee 
through  their  mutual  scientific  interest  in  the  last 
meeting  of  the  geological  "  Society  upon  the  Stanislow." 
He  quoted  to  the  author  some  passages  from  the  poem 
recording  the  final  proceedings  of  this  body,  which  had 
particularly  pleased  him,  and  I  think  Mr.  Harte  was  as 
much  amused  at  finding  himself  thus  in  touch  with  the 
savant,  as  Agassiz  could  ever  have  been  with  that  de 
licious  poem. 

Agassiz  lived  at  one  end  of  Quincy  Street,  and  James 
almost  at  the  other  end,  with  an  interval  between  them 
which  but  poorly  typified  their  difference  of  tempera 
ment.  The  one  was  all  philosophical  and  the  other  all 
scientific,  and  yet  towards  the  close  of  his  life,  Agassiz 
may  be  said  to  have  led  that  movement  towards  the  new 
position  of  science  in  matters  of  mystery  which  is  now 
characteristic  of  it.  He  was  ancestrally  of  the  Swiss 
"  Brahminical  caste,"  as  so  many  of  his  friends  in  Cam 
bridge  were  of  the  Brahminical  caste  of  New  England ; 
and  perhaps  it  was  the  line  of  ancestral  pasteurs  which' 
at  last  drew  him  back,  or  on,  to  the  affirmation  of  an  un- 
foi-mulated  faith  of  his  own.  At  any  rate,  before  most 
other  savants  would  say  that  they  had  souls  of  their  own 
he  became,  by  opening  a  summer  school  of  science  with 
prayer,  nearly  as  consolatory  to  the  unscientific  who 
wished  to  believe  they  had  souls,  as  Mr.  John  Fiske  him- 

272 


CAMBEIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

self,  tKoughi  Mr.  Fiske,  as  tlie  arch-apostle  of  Darwin 
ism,  had  arrived  at  nearly  the  same  point  by  such  a  very 
different  road. 

VI 

Mr.  Fiske  had  been  our  neighbor  in  our  first  Cam 
bridge  home,  and  when  we  went  to  live  in  Berkeley 
Street,  he  followed  with  his  family  and  placed  himself 
across  the  way  in  a  house  which  I  already  knew  as  the 
home  of  Eichard  Henry  Dana,  the  author  of  Two  Years 
Before  the  Mast.  Like  nearly  all  the  other  Cambridge 
men  of  my  acquaintance  Dana  was  very  much  my  senior, 
and  like  the  rest  he  welcomed  my  literary  promise  as 
cordially  as  if  it  were  performance,  with  no  suggestion 
of  the  condescension  which  was  said  to  be  his  attitude 
towards  many  of  his  fellow-men.  I  never  saw  anything 
of  this,  in  fact,  and  I  suppose  he  may  have  been  a  blend 
of  those  patrician  qualities  and  democratic  principles 
which  made  Lowell  anomalous  even  to  himself.  He  is 
part  of  the  antislavery  history  of  his  time,  and  he  gave 
to  the  oppressed  his  strenuous  help  both  as  a  man  and  a 
politician  ;  his  gifts  and  learning  in  the  law  were  freely 
at  their  service.  He  never  lost  his  interest  in  those 
white  slaves,  whose  brutal  bondage  he  remembered  as 
bound  with  them  in  his  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast, 
and  any  luckless  seaman  with  a  case  or  cause  might 
count  upon  his  friendship  as  surely  as  the  black  slaves 
of  the  South.  He  was  able  to  temper  his  indignation 
for  their  oppression  with  a  humorous  perception  of  what 
was  droll  in  its  agents  and  circumstances;  and  I  wish 
I  could  recall  all  that  he  said  once  about  sea-etiquette  on 
merchant  vessels,  where  the  chief  mate  might  no  more 
speak  to  the  captain  at  table  without  being  addressed 
by  him  than  a  subject  might  put  a  question  to  his  sover 
eign.  He  was  amusing  in  his  stories  of  the  Pacific 

273 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

trade  in  which  he  said  it  was  very  noble  to  deal  in  furs 
from  the  Northwest,  and  very  ignoble  to  deal  in  hides 
along  the  Mexican  and  South  American  coasts.  Every 
ship's  master  wished  naturally  to  be  in  the  fur-carrying 
trade,  and  in  one  of  Dana's  instances,  two  vessels  en 
counter  in  mid-ocean,  and  exchange  the  usual  parley 
as  to  their  respective  ports  of  departure  and  destination. 
The  final  demand  comes  through  the  trumpet,  "  What 
cargo?"  and  the  captain  so  challenged  yields  to 
temptation  and  roars  back  "  Furs !"  A  moment  of 
hesitation  elapses,  and  then  the  questioner  pursues, 
"  Here  and  there  a  horn?" 

There  were  other  distinctions,  of  which  seafaring 
men  of  other  days  were  keenly  sensible,  and  Dana  dram 
atized  the  meeting  of  a  great,  swelling  East  Indiarnan, 
with  a  little  Atlantic  trader,  which  has  hailed  her.  She 
shouts  back  through  her  captain's  trumpet  that  she  is 
from  Calcutta,  and  laden  with  silks,  spices,  and  other1 
orient  treasures,  and  in  her  turn  she  requires  like  an 
swer  from  the  sail  which  has  presumed  to  enter  into  par 
ley  with  her.  "  What  cargo  ?"  The  trader  confesses 
to  a  mixed  cargo  for  Boston,  and  to  the  final  question, 
her  master  replies  in  meek  apology,  "  Only  from  Liver 
pool,  sir!"  and  scuttles  down  the  horizon  as  swiftly  as 
possible. 

1  Dana  was  not  of  the  Cambridge  men  whose  calling 
iwas  in  Cambridge.  He  was  a  lawyer  in  active  practice, 
and  he  went  every  day  to  Boston.  One  was  apt  to  meet 
him.  in  those  horse-cars  which  formerly  tinkled  back  and 
forth  between  the  two  cities,  and  which  were  often  so 
full  of  one's  acquaintance  that  they  had  all  the  social 
elements  of  an  afternoon  tea.  They  were  abusively 
overcrowded  at  times,  of  course,  and  one  might  easily 
see  a  prime  literary  celebrity  swaying  from  a  strap,  or 
hanging  uneasily  by  the  hand-rail  to  the  lower  steps  of 

274 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

the  back  platform.  I  do  not  mean  that  I  ever  happened 
to  see  the  author  of  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast  in  either 
fact,  but  in  his  celebrity  he  had  every  qualification  for 
the  illustration  of  my  point.  His  book  probably  car 
ried  the  American  name  farther  and  wider  than  any 
American  books  except  those  of  Irving  and  Cooper  at  a 
day  when  our  writers  were  very  little  known,  and 
our  literature  was  the  only  infant  industry  not  fos 
tered  against  foreign  ravage,  but  expressly  left  to 
harden  and  strengthen  itself  as  it  best  might  in  a 
heartless  neglect  even  at  home.  The  book  was  delight 
ful,  and  I  remember  it  from  a  reading  of  thirty  years 
ago,  as  of  the  stuff  that  classics  are  made  of.  I  venture 
no  conjecture  as  to  its  present  popularity,  but  of  all 
books  relating  to  the  sea  I  think  it  is  the  best.  The 
author  when  I  knew  him  was  still  Richard  Henry  Dana, 
Jr.,  his  father,  the  aged  poet,  who  first  established  the 
name  in  the  public  recognition,  being  alive,  though  past 
literary  activity.  It  was  distinctively  a  literary  race., 
and  in  the  actual  generation  it  has  given  proofs  of  its; 
continued  literary  vitality  in  the  romance  of  Espiritw 
Santo  by  the  youngest  daughter  of  the  Dana  I  knew. 


VII 

There  could  be  no  stronger  contrast  to  him  in  origin, 
education,  and  character  than  a  man  who  lived 
at  the  same  time  in  Cambridge,  and  who  produced 
a  book  which  in  its  final  fidelity  to  life  is  not  unworthy 
to  be  named  with  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast.  Ralph 
Keeler  wrote  the  Vagabond  Adventures  which  he  had 
lived.  I  have  it  on  my  heart  to  name  him  in  the  pres 
ence  of  our  great  literary  men  not  only  because  I  had  an 
affection  for  him,  tenderer  than  I  then  knew,  but  be 
cause  I  believe  his  book  is  worthier  of  more  remem- 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

brance  than  it  seems  to  enjoy.  I  was  reading  it  only 
the  other  day,  and  I  found  it  delightful,  and  much  bet 
ter  than  I  imagined  when  I  accepted  for  the  Atlantic  the 
several  papers  which  it  is  made  up  of.  I  am  not  sure 
hut  it  belongs  to  the  great  literature  in  that  fidelity  to 
life  which  I  have  spoken  of,  and  which  the  author 
brought  himself  to  practise  with  such  difficulty,  and 
under  so  much  stress  from  his  editor.  He  really  want 
ed  to  fake  it  at  times,  but  he  was  docile  at  last  and  did  it 
so  honestly  that  it  tells  the  history  of  his  strange  career 
in  much  better  terms  than  it  can  be  given  again.  He 
had  been,  as  he  claimed,  "  a  cruel  uncle's  ward  "  in 
his  early  orphanhood,  and  while  yet  almost  a  child  he 
had  run  away  from  home,  to  fulfil  his  heart's  desire 
of  becoming  a  clog-dancer  in  a  troupe  of  negro  minstrels. 
But  it  was  first  his  fate  to  be  cabin-boy  and  bootblack 
on  a  lake  steamboat,  and  meet  with  many  squalid  ad 
ventures,  scarcely  to  be  matched  outside  of  a  Spanish 
picaresque  novel.  When  he  did  become  a  dancer  (and 
even  a  danseuse)  of  the  sort  he  aspired  to  be,  the  fru 
ition  of  his  hopes  was  so  little  what  he  imagined  that 
he  was  very  willing  to  leave  the  Floating  Palace  on  the 
Mississippi  in  which  his  troupe  voyaged  and  exhibited, 
and  enter  the  college  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  at  Cape  Gir- 
ardeau  in  Missouri.  They  were  very  good  to  him,  and  in 
their  charge  he  picked  up  a  good  deal  more  Latin,  if  not 
less  Greek  than  another  strolling  player  who  also  took 
to  literature.  From  college  Keeler  wrent  to  Europe,  and 
then  to  California,  whence  he  wrrote  me  that  he  was  com 
ing  on  to  Boston  with  the  manuscript  of  a  novel  which 
he  wished  me  to  read  for  the  magazine.  I  reported 
against  it  to  my  chief,  but  nothing  could  shake  Keeler's 
faith  in  it,  until  he  had  printed  it  at  his  own  cost,  and 
known  it  fail  instantly  and  decisively.  He  had  come  to 
Cambridge  to  see  it  through  the  press,  and  he  remained 

276 


CAMBRIDGE    NEIGHBORS 

there  four  or  five  years,  with  certain  brief  absences. 
Then,  during  the  Cuban  insurrection  of  the  early  seven 
ties,  he  accepted  the  invitation  of  a  Xew  York  paper  to 
go  to  Cuba  as  its  correspondent. 

"  Don't  go,  Keeler,"  I  entreated  him,  when  he  came 
to  tell  me  of  his  intention.  "  They'll  garrote  you  down 
there." 

"  Well,"  he  said,  with  the  air  of  being  pleasantly  in 
terested  by  the  coincidence,  as  he  stood  on  my  study 
hearth  with  his  feet  wide  apart  in  a  fashion  he  had, 
and  gayly  flirted  his  hand  in  the  air,  "  that's  what  Al- 
drich  says,  and  he's  agreed  to  write  my  biography,  011 
condition  that  I  make  a  last  dying  speech  when  they 
bring  me  out  on  the  plaza  to  do  it,  '  If  I  had  taken  the 
advice  of  my  friend  T.  B.  Aldrich,  author  of  Marjorie 
Daw  and  Other  People,  I  should  not  now  be  in  this 
place.'  " 

He  went,  and  he  did  not  come  back.  He  was  not  in 
deed  garroted  as  his  friends  had  promised,  but  he  was 
probably  assassinated  on  the  steamer  by  which  he  sailed 
from  Santiago,  for  he  never  arrived  in  Havana,  and  was 
never  heard  of  again. 

I  now  realize  that  I  loved  him,  though  I  did  as  little 
to  show  it  as  men  commonly  do.  If  I  am  to  meet  some 
where  else  the  friends  who  are  no  longer  here,  I  should 
like  to  meet  Ralph  Keeler,  and  I  would  take  some 
chances  of  meeting  in  a  happy  place  a  soul  which  had  by 
no  means  kept  itself  unspotted,  but  which  in  all  its  con 
sciousness  of  error,  cheerfully  trusted  that  "  the  Al 
mighty  was  not  going  to  scoop  any  of  us."  The  faith 
worded  so  grotesquely  could  not  have  been  more  simply 
or  humbly  affirmed,  and  no  man  I  think  could  have  been 
more  helplessly  sincere.  He  had  nothing  of  that  false 
self-respect  which  forbids  a  man  to  own  himself  wrong 
promptly  and  utterly  when  need  is ;  and  in  fact  he  own- 


LITERAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

ed  to  some  things  in  his  checkered  past  which  would 
hardly  allow  him  any  sort  of  self-respect.  He  had 
always  an  essential  gayety  not  to  be  damped  by  any  dis 
cipline,  and  a  docility  which  expressed  itself  in  cheer 
ful  compliance.  "  Why  do  you  use  bias  for  opinion  ?" 
I  demanded,  in  going  over  a  .proof  with  him.  "  Oh,  be 
cause  I'm  such  an  ass — such  a  bi-ass." 

He  had  a  philosophy  which  he  liked  to  impress  with  a 
vivid  touch  on  his  listener's  shoulder:  "Put  your  finger 
on  the  present  moment  and  enjoy  it.  It's  the  only  one 
you've  got,  or  ever  will  have."  This  light  and  joyous 
creature  could  not  but  be  a  Pariah  among  our  Brahmins, 
and  I  need  not  say  that  I  never  met  him  in  any  of  the 
great  Cambridge  houses.  I  am  not  sure  that  he  was 
a  persona  grata  to  every  one  in  my  own,  for  Keeler  was 
framed  rather  for  men's  liking,  and  Mr.  Aldrich  and  I 
had  our  subtleties  as  to  whether  his  mind  about  women 
was  not  so  Chinese  as  somewhat  to  infect  his  manner. 
Keeler  was  too  really  modest  to  be  of  any  rebellious 
mind  towards  the  society  which  ignored  him,  and  of  too 
sweet  a  cheerfulness  to  be  greatly  vexed  by  it.  He 
lived  on  in  the  house  of  a  suave  old  actor,  who  oddly 
made  his  home  in  Cambridge,  and  he  continued  of  a 
harmless  Bohemianism  in  his  daily  walk,  which  included 
lunches  at  Boston  restaurants  as  often  as  he  could  get 
you  to  let  him  give  them  you,  if  you  were  of  his  ac 
quaintance.  On  a  Sunday  he  would  appear  coming  out 
of  the  post-office  usually  at  the  hour  when  all  cultivated 
Cambridge  was  coming  for  its  letters,  and  wave  a  glad 
hand  in  air,  and  shout  a  blithe  salutation  to  the  friend 
he  had  marked  for  his  companion  in  a  morning  stroll. 
The  stroll  was  commonly  over  the  flats  towards  Brighton 
(I  do  not  know  why,  except  perhaps  that  it  was  out  of 
the  beat  of  the  better  element)  and  the  talk  was  mainly 
of  literature,  in  which  he  was  doing  less  than  he  meant 

278 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

to  do,  and  which  he  seemed  never  able  quite  to  feel  was 
not  a  branch  of  the  Show  Business,  and  might  not  be  le 
gitimately  worked  by  like  advertising,  though  he  truly 
loved  and  honored  it. 

I  suppose  it  was  not  altogether  a  happy  life,  and 
Keeler  had  his  moments  of  amusing  depression,  which 
showed  their  shadows  in  his  smiling  face.  He  was  of 
a  slight  figure  and  low  stature,  with  hands  and  feet  of 
almost  womanish  littleness.  He  was  very  blonde,  and 
his  restless  eyes  were  blue ;  he  wore  his  yellow  beard  in 
whiskers  only,  which  he  pulled  nervously  but  perhaps 
did  not  get  to  droop  so  much  as  he  wished. 


VIII 

Keeler  was  a  native  of  Ohio,  and  there  lived  at  Cam 
bridge  when  I  first  came  there  an  Indianian,  more  ac 
cepted  by  literary  society,  who  was  of  real  quality  as  a 
poet.  Forceythe  Willson,  whose  poem  of  "  The  Old 
Sergeant  "  Doctor  Holmes  used  to  read  publicly  in  the 
closing  year  of  the  civil  war,  was  of  a  Western  altitude 
of  figure,  and  of  an  extraordinary  beauty  of  face  in  an 
oriental  sort.  He  had  large,  dark  eyes  with  clouded 
whites ;  his  full,  silken  beard  was  of  a  flashing  Persian 
blackness.  He  was  excessively  nervous,  to  such  an  ex 
treme  that  when  I  first  met  him  at  Longfellow's,  he 
could  not  hold  himself  still  in  his  chair.  I  think  this 
was  an  effect  of  shyness  in  him,  as  well  as  physical,  for 
afterwards  when  I  went  to  find  him  in  his  own  house 
he  was  much  more  at  ease. 

He  preferred  to  receive  me  in  the  dim,  large  hall 
after  opening  his  door  to  me  himself,  and  we  sat  down 
there  and  talked,  I  remember,  of  supernatural  things. 
He  was  much  interested  in  spiritualism,  and  he  had 
several  stories  to  tell  of  his  own  experience  in  such  mat- 

279 


LITERARY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

ters.  But  none  was  so  good  as  one  which  I  had  at  sec 
ond  hand  from  Lowell,  who  thought  it  almost  the  best 
ghost  story  he  had  ever  heard.  The  spirit  of  Willson's 
father  appeared  to  him,  and  stood  before  him.  Will- 
son  was  accustomed  to  apparitions,  and  so  he  said  sim 
ply,  "  Won't  you  sit  down,  father  ?"  The  phantom  put 
out  his  hand  to  lay  hold  of  a  chair-back  as  some  people 
do  in  taking  a  seat,  and  his  shadowy  arm  passed  through 
the  frame-work.  "  Ah!"  he  said,  "  I  forgot  that  I  was 
not  substance." 

I  do  not  know  whether  "  The  Old  Sergeant "  is  ever 
read  now ;  it  has  probably  passed  with  other  great  mem 
ories  of  the  great  war;  and  I  am  afraid  none  of  Will- 
son's  other  verse  is  remembered.  But  he  was  then  a  dis 
tinct  literary  figure,  and  not  to  be  left  out  of  the  count 
of  our  poets.  I  did  not  see  him  again.  Shortly  after 
wards  I  heard  that  he  had  left  Cambridge  with  signs  of 
'consumption,  which  must  have  run  a  rapid  course,  for 
a  very  little  later  came  the  news  of  his  death. 

IX 

The  most  devoted  Cantabrigian,  after  Lowell,  whom  I 
knew,  would  perhaps  have  contended  that  if  he  had  stay 
ed  with  us  Willson  might  have  lived ;  for  John  Holmes 
affirmed  a  faith  in  the  virtues  of  the  place  which  as 
cribed  almost  an  aseptic  character  to  its  air,  and  when 
he  once  listened  to  my  own  complaints  of  an  obstinate 
cold,  he  cheered  himself,  if  not  me,  with  the  declaration, 
"  Well,  one  thing,  Mr.  Howells,  Cambridge  never  let  a 
man  keep  a  cold  yet !" 

If  he  had  said  it  was  better  to  live  in  Cambridge  with 
a  cold  than  elsewhere  without  one  I  should  have  believed 
him ;  as  it  was,  Cambridge  bore  him  out  in  his  assertion, 
though  she  took  her  own  time  to  do  it. 

280 


CAMBKIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

Lowell  had  talked  to  me  of  him  before  I  met 
him,  celebrating  his  peculiar  humor  with  that  affec 
tion  which  was  not  always  so  discriminating,  and 
Holmes  was  one  of  'the  first  Cambridge  men  I 
knew.  I  knew  him  first  in  the  charming  old 
Colonial  house  in  which  his  famous  brother  and  he 
were  born.  It  was  demolished  long  before  I  left  Cam 
bridge,  but  in  memory  it  still  stands  on  the  ground  since 
occupied  by  the  Hemenway  Gymnasium,  and  shows 
for  me  through  that  bulk  a  phantom  frame  of  Continen 
tal  buff  in  the  shadow  of  elms  that  are  shadows  them 
selves.  The  genius  loci  was  limping  about  the  pleasant 
mansion  with  tlie  rheumatism  which  then  expressed 
itself  to  his  friends  in  a  resolute  smile,  but  which  now 
insists  upon  being  an  essential  trait  of  the  full-length 
presence  to  my  mind:  a  short  stout  figure,  helped  out 
with  a  cane,  and  a  grizzled  head  with  features  formed 
to  win  the  heart  rather  than  the  eye  of  the  beholder. 
In  one  of  his  own  eyes  there  was  a  cast  of  such  win 
ning  humor  and  geniality  that  it  took  the  liking  more 
than  any  beauty  could  have  done,  and  the  sweetest, 
shy  laugh  in  the  world  went  with  this  cast. 

I  long  wished  to  get  him  to  write  something  for  the 
Magazine,  and  at  last  I  prevailed  with  him  to  review  a 
history  of  Cambridge  which  had  come  out.  He  did  it 
charmingly  of  course,  for  he  loved  more  to  speak  of 
Cambridge  than  anything  else.  He  held  his  native  town 
in  an  idolatry  which  was  not  blind,  but  which  was  none 
the  less  devoted  because  he  was  aware  of  her  droll  points 
and  her  weak  points.  He  always  celebrated  these  as  so 
many  virtues,  and  I  think  it  was  my  own  passion  for  her 
that  first  commended  me  to  him.  I  was  not  her  son,  but 
he  felt  that  this  was  my  misfortune  more  than  my  fault, 
and  he  seemed  more  and  more  to  forgive  it.  After  we 
had  got  upon  the  terms  of  editor  and  contributor,  we  met 

281 


LITEKAKY  FK1ENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

oftener  than  before,  though  I  do  not  now  remember 
that  I  ever  persuaded  him  to  write  again  for  me.  Once 
he  gave  me  something,  and  then  took  it  back,  with  a 
self-distrust  of  it  which  I  could  not  overcome. 

When  the  Holmes  house  was  taken  down,  he  went  to 
live  with  an  old  domestic  in  a  small  house  on  the  street 
amusingly  called  Appian  Way.  Pie  had  certain  rooms 
of  her,  and  his  own  table,  but  he  would  not  allow  that 
he  was  ever  anything  but  a  lodger  in  the  place,  where  he 
continued  till  he  died.  In  the  process  of  time  he  came 
so  far  to  trust  his  experience  of  me,  that  he  formed  the 
habit  of  giving  me  an  annual  supper.  Some  days  before 
this  event,  he  would  appear  in  my  study,  and  with  divers 
delicate  and  tentative  approaches,  nearly  always  of  the 
same  tenor,  he  would  say  that  he  should  like  to  ask  my 
family  to  an  oyster  supper  with  him.  "  But  you  know," 
he  would  explain,  "  I  haven't  a  house  of  my  own  to  ask 
you  to,  and  I  should  like  to  give  you  the  supper  here." 
When  I  had  agreed  to  this  suggestion  with  due  gravity, 
he  would  inquire  our  engagements,  and  then  say,  as  if 
a  great  load  were  off  his  mind,  "  Well,  then,  I  will  send 
up  a  few  oysters  to-morrow,"  or  whatever  day  we  had 
fixed  on ;  and  after  a  little  more  talk  to  take  the  strange 
ness  out  of  the  affair,  would  go  his  way.  On  the  day 
appointed  the  fish-man  would  come  with  several  gallons 
of  oysters,  which  he  reported  Mr.  Holmes  had  asked 
him  to  bring,  and  in  the  evening  the  giver  of  the  feast 
would  reappear,  with  a  lank  oil-cloth  bag,  sagged  by 
some  bottles  of  wine.  There  was  always  a  bottle  of  red 
wine,  and  sometimes  a  bottle  of  champagne,  and  he  had 
taken  the  precaution  to  send  some  crackers  beforehand, 
so  that  the  supper  should  be  as  entirely  of  his  own  giving 
as  possible.  He  was  forced  to  let  us  do  the  cooking  and 
to  supply  the  cold-slaw,  and  perhaps  he  indemnified  him 
self  for  putting  us  to  these  charges  and  for  the  use  of 

282 


CAMBEIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

our  linen  and  silver,  by  the  vast  superfluity  of  his  oys 
ters,  with  which  we  remained  inundated  for  days.  He 
did  not  care  to  eat  many  himself,  but  seemed  content  to 
fancy  doing  us  a  pleasure ;  and  I  have  known  few  great 
er  ones  in  life,  than  in  the  hospitality  that  so  oddly  play 
ed  the  host  to  us  at  our  own  table. 

It  must  have  seemed  incomprehensible  to  such  a  Can 
tabrigian  that  we  should  ever  have  been  willing  to  leave 
Cambridge,  and  in  fact  I  do  not  well  understand  it  my 
self.  But  if  he  resented  it,  he  never  showed  his  resent 
ment.  As  often  as  I  happened  to  meet  him  after  our 
defection  he  used  me  with  unabated  kindness,  and  spar 
kled  into  some  gayety  too  ethereal  for  remembrance. 
The  last  time  I  met  him  was  at  Lowell's  funeral,  when  I 
drove  home  with  him  and  Curtis  and  Child,  and  in  the 
revulsion  from  the  stress  of  that  saddest  event,  had  our 
laugh,  as  people  do  in  the  presence  of  death,  at  some 
thing  droll  we  remembered  of  the  friend  we  mourned. 


My  nearest  literary  neighbor,  when  we  lived  in  Sac 
ramento  Street,  was  the  Eev.  Dr.  John  G.  Palfrey,  the 
historian  of  New  England,  whose  chimney-tops  amid 
the  pine-tops  I  could  see  from  my  study  window  when 
the  leaves  were  off  the  little  grove  of  oaks  between  us, 
He  was  one  of  the  first  of  my  acquaintances,  not  suffer 
ing  the  great  disparity  of  our  ages  to  count  against  me, 
but  tactfully  and  sweetly  adjusting  himself  to  my  youth 
in  the  friendly  intercourse  which  he  invited.  He  was  a 
most  gentle  and  kindly  old  man,  with  still  an  interest 
in  liberal  things  which  lasted  till  the  infirmities  of  age 
secluded  him  from  the  world  and  all  its  interests.  As 
is  known,  he  had  been  in  his  prime  one  of  the  foremost 
of  the  New  England  antisla.yery  men,  and  he  had 

283 


LITERARY  FRIENDS   AND   ACQUAINTANCE 

fought  the  good  fight  with  a  heavy  heart  for  a  brother 
long  settled  in  Louisiana  who  sided  with  the  South,  and 
who  after  the  civil  war  found  himself  disfranchised.  In 
this  temporary  disability  he  came  North  to  visit  Doctor 
Palfrey  upon  the  doctor's  insistence,  though  at  first  he 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  him,  and  refused  even 
to  answer  his  letters.  "  Of  course,"  the  doctor  said, 
"  I  was  not  going  to  stand  that  from  my  mother's  son, 
and  I  simply  kept  on  writing."  So  he  prevailed,  but 
the  fiery  old  gentleman  from  Louisiana  was  reconciled 
to  nothing  in  the  North  but  his  brother,  and  when  ho 
came  to  return  my  visit,  he  quickly  touched  upon  his 
cause  of  quarrel  with  us.  "  I  can't  vote,"  he  declared, 
"  but  my  coachman  can,  and  I  don't  know  how  I'm  to 
get  the  suffrage,  unless  my  physician  paints  me  all 
over  with  the  iodine  he's  using  for  my  rheumatic 
side." 

Doctor  Palfrey  was  most  distinctly  of  the  Brahmini- 
cal  caste  and  was  long  an  eminent  Unitarian  minister, 
but  at  the  time  I  began  to  know  him  he  had  long  quitted 
the  pulpit.  He  was  so  far  of  civic  or  public  character 
as  to  be  postmaster  at  Boston,  when  we  were  first  neigh 
bors,  but  this  officiality  was  probably  so  little  in  keeping 
with  his  nature  that  it  was  like  a  return  to  his  truer  self 
when  he  ceased  to  hold  the  place,  and  gave  his  time  alto 
gether  to  his  history.  It  is  a  work  which  will  hardly 
be  superseded  in  the  interest  of  those  who  value 
thorough  research  and  temperate  expression.  It  is  very 
just,  and  without  endeavor  for  picture  or  drama  it  is  to 
me  very  attractive.  Much  that  has  to  be  recorded  of 
New  England  lacks  charm,  but  he  gave  form  and  dig 
nity  and  presence  to  the  memories  of  the  past,  and  the 
finer  moments  of  that  great  story,  he  gave  with  the  sim 
plicity  that  was  their  best  setting.  It  seems  to  me  such 
an  apology  (in  the  old  sense)  as  New  England  might 

284 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

have  written  for  herself,  and  in  fact  Doctor  Palfrey 
was  a  personification  of  New  England  in  one  of  the  best 
and  truest  kinds.  He  was  refined  in  the  essential  gen 
tleness  of  his  heart  without  being  refined  away ;  he  kept 
the  faith  of  her  Puritan  tradition  though  he  no  longer 
kept  the  Puritan  faith,  and  his  defence  of  the  Puritan 
severity  with  the  witches  and  Quakers  was  as  impartial 
as  it  was  efficient  in  positing  the  Puritans  as  of  their 
time,  and  rather  better  and  not  worse  than  other  people 
of  the  same  time.  He  was  himself  a  most  tolerant  man, 
and  his  tolerance  was  never  weak  or  fond;  it  stopped 
well  short  of  condoning  error,  which  he  condemned  when 
he  preferred  to  leave  it  to  its  own  punishment.  Person 
ally  he  was  without  any  flavor  of  harshness;  his  mind 
was  as  gentle  as  his  manner,  which  was  one  of  the  gen 
tlest  I  have  ever  known. 

Of  as  gentle  make  but  of  more  pensive  temper,  with 
unexpected  bursts  of  lyrical  gayety,  was  Christopher 
Pearse  Cranch,  the  poet,  whom  I  had  known  in  New 
York  long  before  he  came  to  live  in  Cambridge.  He 
could  not  only  play  and  sing  most  amusing  songs,  but  he 
wrote  very  good  poems  and  painted  pictures  perhaps  not 
so  good.  I  always  liked  his  Venetian  pictures,  for 
their  poetic,  unsentimentalized  veracity,  and  I  printed 
as  well  as  liked  many  of  his  poems.  During  the  time 
that  I  knew  him  more  than  his  due  share  of  troubles 
and  sorrows  accumulated  themselves  on  his  fine  head, 
which  the  years  had  whitened,  and  gave  a  droop  to  the 
beautiful,  white-bearded  face.  But  he  had  the  artist 
soul  and  the  poet  heart,  and  no  doubt  he  could  take 
refuge  in  these  from  the  cares  that  shadowed  his  visage. 
My  acquaintance  with  him  in  Cambridge  renewed 
itself  upon  the  very  terms  of  its  beginning  in  New 
York.  We  met  at  Longfellow's  table,  where  he  lifted 
up  his  voice  in  the  Yankee  folk-song,  "  On  Springfield 

285 


LITERAKY  FKIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

Mountain  there  did  dwell,"  which  he  gave  with  a  per 
fectly  killing  mock-gravity. 


XI 

At  Cambridge  the  best  society  was  better,  it  seems 
to  me,  than  even  that  of  the  neighboring  capital.  It 
would  be  rather  hard  to  prove  this,  and  I  must  ask  the 
reader  to  take  my  word  for  it,  if  he  wishes  to  believe  it. 
The  great  interests  in  that  pleasant  world,  which  I 
think  does  not  present  itself  to  my  memory  in  a  false 
iridiscence,  were  the  intellectual  interests,  and  all  other 
interests  were  lost  in  these  to  such  as  did  not  seek  them 
too  insistently. 

People  held  themselves  high;  they  held  themselves 
personally  aloof  from  people  not  duly  assayed;  their 
civilization  was  still  Puritan  though  their  belief  had 
long  ceased  to  be  so.  They  had  weights  and  measures 
stamped  in  an  earlier  time,  a  time  surer  of  itself  than 
ours,  by  which  they  rated  the  merit  of  all  corners,  and 
rejected  such  as  did  not  bear  the  test.  These  standards 
were  their  own,  and  they  were  satisfied  with  them ;  most 
Americans  have  no  standards  of  their  own,  but  these 
are  not  satisfied  even  with  other  people's,  and  so  our 
society  is  in  a  state  of  tolerant  and  tremulous  misgiving. 

Family  counted  in  Cambridge,  without  doubt,  as  it 
counts  in  ISTew  England  everywhere,  but  family  alone 
did  not  mean  position,  and  the  want  of  family  did  not 
mean  the  want  of  it.  Money  still  less  than  family  com 
manded  ;  one  could  be  openly  poor  in  Cambridge  with 
out  open  shame,  or  shame  at  all,  for  no  one  was  very  rich 
there,  and  no  one  was  proud  of  his  riches. 

I  do  not  wonder  that  Turgueuieff  thought  the  condi 
tions  ideal,  as  Boyesen  portrayed  them  to  him;  and  I 
look  back  at  my  own  life  there  with  wonder  at  my  good 
.  286 


CAMBRIDGE   NEIGHBORS 

fortune.  I  was  sensible,  and  I  still  am  sensible  -this 
had  its  alloys.  I  was  young  and  unknown  and  was  mak 
ing  my  way,  and  I  had  to  suffer  some  of  the  penalties 
of  these  disadvantages;  but  I  do  not  believe  that  any 
where  else  in  this  ill-contrived  economy,  where  it  is  vain 
ly  imagined  that  the  material  struggle  forms  a  high  in 
centive  and  inspiration,  would  my  penalties  have  been 
so  light.  On  the  other  hand,  the  good  that  was  done  me 
I  could  never  repay  if  I  lived  all  over  again  for  others 
the  life  that  I  have  so  long  lived  for  myself.  At  times, 
when  I  had  experienced  from  those  elect  spirits  with 
whom  I  was  associated,  some  act  of  friendship,  as  signal 
as  it  was  delicate,  I  used  to  ask  myself,  how  I  could  ever 
do  anything  unhandsome  or  ungenerous  towards  any  one 
again ;  and  I  had  a  bad  conscience  the  next  time  I  did  it. 
The  air  of  the  Cambridge  that  I  knew  was  sufficient 
ly  cool  to  be  bracing,  but  what  was  of  good  import  in  me 
flourished  in  it.  The  life  of  the  place  had  its  lateral 
limitations;  sometimes  its  lights  failed  to  detect  ex 
cellent  things  that  lay  beyond  it ;  but  upward  it  opened 
illimitably.  I  speak  of  it  frankly  because  that  life 
as  I  witnessed  it  is  now  almost  wholly  of  the  past.  Cam 
bridge  is  still  the  home  of  much  that  is  good  and  fine  in 
our  literature:  one  realizes  this  if  one  names  Colonel 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  Mr.  John  Fiske,  Mr. 
William  James,  Mr.  Horace  E.  Scudder,  not  to  name 
any  others,  but  the  first  had  not  yet  come  back  to  live  in 
his  birthplace  at  the  time  I  have  been  writing  of,  and 
the  rest  had  not  yet  their  actual  prominence.  One,  in 
deed  among  so  many  absent,  is  still  present  there,  whom 
from  time  to  time  I  have  hitherto  named  without  offer 
ing  him  the  recognition  which  I  should  have  known  an 
infringement  of  his  preferences.  But  the  literary 
Cambridge  of  thirty  years  ago  could  not  be  clearly 
imagined  or  justly  estimated  without  taking  into  ac- 

287 


LITEEAEY  FRIENDS  AND  ACQUAINTANCE 

count  the  creative  sympathy  of  a  man  whose  contribu 
tions  to  our  literature  only  partially  represent  what  he 
has  constantly  done  for  the  humanities.  I  am  sure 
that,  after  the  easy  heroes  of  the  day  are  long  forgot, 
and  the  noisy  fames  of  the  strenuous  life  shall  dwindle 
to  their  essential  insignificance  before  those  of  the  gen 
tle  life,  we  shall  all  see  in  Charles  Eliot  Norton  the 
eminent  scholar  who  left  the  quiet  of  his  books  to  be 
come  our  chief  citizen  at  the  moment  when  he  warned 
his  countrymen  of  the  ignominy  and  disaster  of  doing 
wrong. 


part 
A     BELATED     GUEST 

IT  is  doubtful  whether  the  survivor  of  any  order  of 
things  finds  compensation  in  the  privilege,  however 
undisputed  by  his  contemporaries,  of  recording  his  mem 
ories  of  it.  This  is,  in  the  first  two  or  three  instances, 
a  pleasure.  It  is  sweet  to  sit  down,  in  the  shade  or  by 
the  fire,  and  recall  names,  looks,  and  tones  from  the 
past ;  and  if  the  Absences  thus  entreated  to  become 
Presences  are  those  of  famous  people,  they  lend  to  the 
fond  historian  a  little  of  their  lustre,  in  which  he  basks 
for  the  time  with  an  agreeable  sense  of  celebrity.  But 
another  time  comes,  and  comes  very  soon,  when  the 
pensive  pleasure  changes  to  the  pain  of  duty,  and  the 
precious  privilege  converts  itself  into  a  grievous  obliga 
tion.  You  are  unable  to  choose  your  company  among 
those  immortal  shades ;  if  one,  why  not  another,  where 
all  seem  to  have  a  right  to  such  gleams  of  this  dolce  lome 
as  your  reminiscences  can  shed  upon  them  ?  Then  they 
gather  so  rapidly,  as  the  years  pass,  in  these  pale  realms, 
that  one,  if  one  continues  to  survive,  is  in  danger  of 
wearing  out  such  welcome,  great  or  small,  as  met  one's 
recollections  in  the  first  two  or  three  instances,  if  one 
does  one's  duty  by  each.  People  begin  to  say,  and  not 
without  reason,  in  a  world  so  hurried  and  wearied  as 
this:  "Ah,  here  he  is  again  with  his  recollections!" 
Well,  but  if  the  recollections  by  some  magical  good- 
fortune  chance  to  concern  such  a  contemporary  of  his 

289 


LITERARY   FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

as,  say,  Bret  Harte,  shall  not  he  be  partially  justified,  or 
at  least  excused  ? 


My  recollections  of  Bret  Harte  begin  with  the  arrest, 
on  the  Atlantic  shore,  of  that  progress  of  his  from  the 
Pacific  Slope,  which,  in  the  simple  days  of  1871,  was 
like  the  progress  of  a  prince,  in  the  universal  attention 
and  interest  which  met  and  followed  it.  He  was  in 
deed  a  prince,  a  fairy  prince  in  whom  every  lover  of  his 
novel  and  enchanting  art  felt  a  patriotic  property,  for 
his  promise  and  performance  in  those  earliest  tales  of 
The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  and  Tennessee's  Partner, 
and  Niggles,  and  The  Outcasts  of  Polcer  Flat,  were  the 
earnests  of  an  American  literature  to  come.  If  it  is 
still  to  come,  in  great  measure,  that  is  not  Harte's  fault, 
for  he  kept  on  writing  those  stories,  in  one  form  or 
another,  as  long  as  he  lived.  He  wrote  them  first  and 
last  in  the  spirit  of  Dickens,  which  no  man  of  his  time 
could  quite  help  doing,  but  he  wrote  them  from  the 
life  of  Bret  Harte,  on  the  soil  and  in  the  air  of  the 
newest  kind  of  new  world,  and  their  freshness  took  the 
soul  of  his  fellow-countrymen  not  only  with  joy,  but 
with  pride  such  as  the  Europeans,  who  adored  him 
much  longer,  could  never  know  in  him. 

When  the  adventurous  young  editor  who  had  pro 
posed  being  his  host  for  Cambridge  and  the  Boston 
neighborhood,  while  Harte  was  still  in  San  Francisco, 
and  had  not  yet  begun  his  princely  progress  eastward, 
read  of  the  honors  that  attended  his  coming  from  point 
to  point,  his  courage  fell,  as  if  he  had  perhaps  com 
mitted  himself  in  too  great  an  enterprise.  Who  was 
he,  indeed,  that  he  should  think  of  making  this 

"  Dear  son  of  memory,  great  heir  of  fame," 
290 


his  guest,  especially  when  he  heard  that  in  Chicago 
Harte  failed  of  attending  a  banquet  of  honor  because 
the  givers  of  it  had  not  sent  a  carriage  to  fetch  him  to 
it,  as  the  alleged  use  was  in  San  Francisco  ?  Whether 
true  or  not,  and  it  was  probably  not  true  in  just  that 
form,  it  must  have  been  this  rumor  which  determined 
his  host  to  drive  into  Boston  for  him  with  the  hand 
somest  hack  which  the  livery  of  Cambridge  afforded, 
and  not  trust  to  the  horse-car  and  the  local  expressman 
to  get  him  and  his  baggage  out,  as  he  would  have  done 
with  a  less  portentous  guest.  However  it  was,  he  in 
stantly  lost  all  fear  when  they  met  at  the  station,  and 
Harte  pressed  forward  with  his  cordial  hand-clasp,  as 
if  he  were  not  even  a  fairy  prince,  and  with  that  voice 
and  laugh  which  were  surely  the  most  winning  in  the 
world.  He  was  then,  as  always,  a  child  of  extreme 
fashion  as  to  his  clothes  and  the  cut  of  his  beard,  which 
he  wore  in  a  mustache  and  the  drooping  side-whiskers 
of  the  day,  and  his  jovial  physiognomy  was  as  winning 
as  his  voice,  with  its  straight  nose  and  fascinating 
thrust  of  the  under  lip,  its  fine  eyes,  and  good  fore 
head,  then  thickly  crowned  with  the  black  hair  which 
grew  early  white,  while  his  mustache  remained  dark: 
the  most  enviable  and  consoling  effect  possible  in  the 
universal  mortal  necessity  of  either  aging  or  dying. 
He  was,  as  one  could  not  help  seeing,  thickly  pitted, 
but  after  the  first  glance  one  forgot  this,  so  that  a  lady 
who  met  him  for  the  first  time  could  say  to  him,  "  Mr. 
Harte,  aren't  you  afraid  to  go  about  in  the  cars  so 
recklessly  when  there  is  this  scare  about  smallpox?" 
"  Xo,  madam,"  he  could  answer  in  that  rich  note  of 
his,  with  an  irony  touched  by  pseudo-pathos,  "  I  bear 
a  charmed  life." 

The  drive  out  from  Boston  was  not  too  long  for  get 
ting  on  terms  of  personal  friendship  with  the  family 
20  291 


LITERARY   FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

which  just  filled  the  hack,  the  two  boys  intensely  inter 
ested  in  the  novelties  of  a  New  England  city  and  sub 
urb,  and  the  father  and  mother  continually  exchanging 
admiration  of  such  aspects  of  nature  as  presented  them 
selves  in  the  leafless  sidewalk  trees,  and  patches  of  park 
and  lawn.  They  found  everything  so  fine,  so  refined, 
after  the  gigantic  coarseness  of  California,  where  the 
natural  forms  were  so  vast  that  one  could  not  get  on 
companionable  terms  with  them.  Their  host  heard 
them  without  misgiving  for  the  world  of  romance 
which  Harte  had  built  up  among  those  huge  forms, 
and  with  a  subtle  perception  that  this  was  no  excursion 
of  theirs  to  the  East,  but  a  lifelong  exodus  from  the 
exile  which  he  presently  understood  they  must  always 
have  felt  California  to  be.  It  is  different  now,  when 
people  are  every  day  being  born  in  California,  and 
must  begin  to  feel  it  home  from  the  first  breath,  but 
it  is  notable  that  none  of  the  Californians  of  that  great 
early  day  have  gone  back  to  live  amid  the  scenes  which 
inspired  and  prospered  them. 

Before  they  came  in  sight  of  the  editor's  humble  roof 
he  had  mocked  himself  to  his  guest  for  his  trepidations, 
and  Harte  with  burlesque  magnanimity  had  consented 
to  be  for  that  occasion  only  something  less  formidable 
than  he  had  loomed  afar.  He  accepted  with  joy  the 
theory  of  passing  a  week  in  the  home  of  virtuous  pov 
erty,  and  the  week  began  as  delightfully  as  it  went  on. 
Erom  first  to  last  Cambridge  amused  him  as  much  as  it 
charmed  him  by  that  air  of  academic  distinction  which 
was  stranger  to  him  even  than  the  refined  trees  and 
grass.  It  has  already  been  told  how,  after  a  list  of  the 
local  celebrities  had  been  recited  to  him,  he  said,  "  Why, 
you  couldn't  stand  on  your  front  porch  and  fire  off  your 
revolver  without  bringing  down  a  two-volumer,"  and 
no  doubt  the  pleasure  he  had  in  it  was  the  effect  of  its 

292 


A    BELATED    GUEST 

contrast  with  the  wild  California  he  had  known,  and 
perhaps,  when  he  had  not  altogether  known  it,  had 
invented. 


ii 


Cambridge  began  very  promptly  to  show  him  those 
hospitalities  which  he  could  value,  and  continued  the 
fable  of  his  fairy  princeliness  in  the  curiosity  of  those 
humbler  admirers  who  could  not  hope  to  be  his  hosts 
or  his  fellow-guests  at  dinner  or  luncheon.  Pretty  pres 
ences  in  the  tie-backs  of  the  period  were  seen  to  flit  be 
fore  the  home  of  virtuous  poverty,  hungering  for  any 
chance  sight  of  him  which  his  outgoings  or  incomings 
might  give.  The  chances  were  better  with  the  outgoings 
than  with  the  incomings,  for  these  were  apt  to  be  so 
hurried,  in  the  final  result  of  his  constitutional  delays, 
as  to  have  the  rapidity  of  the  homing  pigeon's  flight, 
and  to  afford  hardly  a  glimpse  to  the  quickest  eye.  It 
cannot  harm  him,  or  any  one  now,  to  own  that  Harte 
was  nearly  always  late  for  those  luncheons  and  dinners 
which  he  was  always  going  out  to,  and  it  needed  the 
anxieties  and  energies  of  both  families  to  get  him  into 
his  clothes,  and  then  into  the  carriage  where  a  good  deal 
of  final  buttoning  must  have  been  done,  in  order  that 
he  might  not  arrive  so  very  late.  He  was  the  only  one 
concerned  who  was  quite  unconcerned ;  his  patience 
with  his  delays  was  inexhaustible;  he  arrived  at  the 
expected  houses  smiling,  serenely  jovial,  radiating  a 
bland  gayety  from  his  whole  person,  and  ready  to  ig 
nore  any  discomfort  he  might  have  occasioned. 

Of  course,  people  were  glad  to  have  him  on  his  own 
terms,  and  it  may  be  truly  said  that  it  was  worth  while 
to  have  him  on  any  terms.  There  never  was  a  more 
charming  companion,  an  easier  or  more  delightful  guest. 

293 


L1TEBABY   FBIEXDS   AND   ACQUAINTANCE 

It  was  not  from  what  he  said,  for  he  was  not  much  of  a 
talker,  and  almost  nothing  of  a  story-teller ;  but  he  could 
now  and  then  drop  the  fittest  word,  and  with  a  glance 
or  smile  of  friendly  intelligence  express  the  apprecia 
tion  of  another's  fit  word  which  goes  far  to  establish  for 
a  man  the  character  of  boon  humorist.  It  must  be  said 
of  him  that  if  he  took  the  honors  easily  that  were  paid 
him  he  took  them  modestly,  and  never  by  word  or  look 
invited  them,  or  implied  that  he  expected  them.  It 
was  fine  to  see  him  humorously  accepting  the  humor 
ous  attribution  of  scientific  sympathies  from  Agassiz, 
in  compliment  of  his  famous  epic  describing  the  in 
cidents  that  "  broke  up  the  society  upon  the  Stanis- 
low."  It  was  a  little  fearsome  to  hear  him  frankly 
owning  to  Lowell  his  dislike  for  something  overliterary 
in  the  phrasing  of  certain  verses  of  The  Cathedral. 
But  Lowell  could  stand  that  sort  of  thing  from  a  man 
who  could  say  the  sort  of  things  that  Ilarte  said  to 
him  of  that  delicious  line  picturing  the  bobolink 
as  he — 

"Runs  dovm  a  brook  of  laughter  in  the  air." 

This,  Ilarte  told  him,  was  the  line  he  liked  best  of  all 
his  lines,  and  Lowell  smoked  well  content  with  the 
praise.  Yet  they  were  not  men  to  get  on  easily  to 
gether,  Lowell  having  limitations  in  directions  where 
Harte  had  none.  Afterward  in  London  they  did  not 
meet  often  or  willingly.  Lowell  owned  the  brilliancy 
and  uncominonness  of  Ilarte's  gift,  while  he  sumptu 
ously  surfeited  his  passion  of  finding  everybody  more 
or  less  a  Jew  by  finding  that  Ilarte  was  at  least  half  a 
Jew  on  his  father's  side ;  he  had  long  contended  for  the 
Hebraicism  of  his  name. 

With  all  his  appreciation  of  the  literary  eminences 
whom  Fields  used  to  class  together  as  "  the  old  saints," 

294 


A   BELATED   GUEST 

Harte  had  a  spice  of  irreverence  that  enabled  him  to 
take  them  more  ironically  than  they  might  have  liked, 
and  to  see  the  fun  of  a  minor  literary  man's  relation  to 
them.  Emerson's  smoking  amused  him,  as  a  Jovian 
self  -  indulgence  divinely  out  of  character  with  so  su 
preme  a  god,  and  he  shamelessly  burlesqued  it,  telling 
how  Emerson  at  Concord  had  proposed  having  a  "  wet 
night "  with  him  over  a  glass  of  sherry,  and  had  urged 
the  scant  wine  upon  his  young  friend  with  a  hospitable 
gesture  of  his  cigar.  But  this  was  long  after  the  Cam 
bridge  episode,  in  which  Longfellow  alone  escaped  the 
corrosive  touch  of  his  subtle  irreverence,  or,  more  strict 
ly  speaking,  had  only  the  effect  of  his  reverence.  That 
gentle  and  exquisitely  modest  dignity  of  Longfellow's 
he  honored  with  as  much  veneration  as  it  was  in  him 
to  bestow,  and  he  had  that  sense  of  Longfellow's  beauti 
ful  and  perfected  art  which  is  almost  a  test  of  a  critic's 
own  fineness. 


in 


As  for  Harte's  talk,  it  was  mostly  ironical,  not  to  the 
extreme  of  satire,  but  tempered  to  an  agreeable  coolness 
even  for  the  things  he  admired.  He  did  not  apparently 
care  to  hear  himself  praised,  but  he  could  very  ac 
curately  and  perfectly  mark  his  discernment  of  excel 
lence  in  others.  He  was  at  times  a  keen  observer  of 
nature  and  again  not,  apparently.  Something  was  said 
before  him  and  Lowell  of  the  beauty  of  his  description 
of  a  rabbit,  startled  with  fear  among  the  ferns,  and 
lifting  its  head  with  the  pulsation  of  its  frightened 
heart  visibly  shaking  it ;  then  the  talk  turned  on  the 
graphic  homeliness  of  Dante's  noticing  how  the  dog's 
skin  moves  upon  it,  and  Harte  spoke  of  the  exquisite 
shudder  with  which  a  horse  tries  to  rid  itself  of  a  fly. 

295 


LITERARY   FRIENDS   AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

But  once  again,  when  an  azalea  was  shown  to  him  as 
the  sort  of  bush  that  Sandy  drunkenly  slept  under  in 
The  Idyl  of  Red  Gulch,  lie  asked,  "  Why,  is  that  an 
azalea?"  To  be  sure,  this  might  have  been  less  from 
his  ignorance  or  indifference  concerning  the  quality 
of  the  bush  he  had  sent  Sandy  to  sleep  under  than  from 
his  willingness  to  make  a  mock  of  an  azalea  in  a  very 
small  pot,  so  disproportionate  to  uses  which  an  azalea 
of  Californian  size  could  easily  lend  itself  to. 

You  never  could  be  sure  of  Harte ;  he  could  only  by 
chance  be  caught  in  earnest  about  anything  or  anybody. 
Except  for  those  slight  recognitions  of  literary  traits  in 
his  talk  with  Lowell,  nothing  remained  from  his  con 
versation  but  the  general  criticism  he  passed  upon  his 
brilliant  fellowr-Hebrew  Heine,  as  "  rather  scorbutic." 
He  preferred  to  talk  about  the  little  matters  of  common 
incident  and  experience.  He  amused  himself  with  such 
things  as  the  mystification  of  the  postman  of  whom  he 
asked  his  way  to  Phillips  Avenue,  where  he  adventur 
ously  supposed  his  host  to  be  living.  "  Why,"  the  post 
man  said,  "  there  is  no  Phillips  Avenue  in  Cambridge. 
There's  Phillips  Place."  "Well,"  Harte  assented, 
"  Phillips  Place  will  do;  but  there  is  a  Phillips  Ave 
nue."  He  entered  eagerly  into  the  canvass  of  the 
distinctions  and  celebrities  asked  to  meet  him,  at  the 
reception  made  for  him,  but  he  had  even  a  greater  pleas 
ure  in  compassionating  his  host  for  the  vast  disparity 
between  the  caterer's  china  and  plated  ware  and  the 
simplicities  and  humilities  of  the  home  of  virtuous  pov 
erty;  and  he  spluttered  with  delight  at  the  sight  of  the 
lofty  epergnes  set  up  and  down  the  supper-table  when 
he  was  brought  in  to  note  the  preparations  made  in  his 
honor.  Those  monumental  structures  were  an  inex 
haustible  joy  to  him;  he  walked  round  and  round  the 
room,  and  viewed  them  in  different  perspectives,  so  as 

296 


A    BELATED    GUEST 

to  get  the  full  effect  of  the  towering  forms  that  dwarfed 
it  so. 

He  was  a  tease,  as  many  a  sweet  and  fine  wit  is  apt 
to  be,  but  his  teasing  was  of  the  quality  of  a  caress,  so 
much  kindness  went  with  it.  lie  lamented  as  an  ir 
reparable  loss  his  having  missed  seeing  that  night  an 
absent-minded  brother  in  literature,  who  came  in  rub 
ber  shoes,  and  forgetfully  wore  them  throughout  the 
evening.  That  hospitable  soul  of  Ralph  Keeler,  who 
had  known  him  in  California,  but  had  trembled  for 
their  acquaintance  when  he  read  of  all  the  honors  that 
might  well  have  spoiled  Harte  for  the  friends  of  his 
simpler  days,  rejoiced  in  the  unchanged  cordiality  of 
his  nature  when  they  met,  and  presently  gave  him  one 
of  those  restaurant  lunches  in  Boston,  which  he  was 
always  sumptuously  providing  out  of  his  destitution. 
Harte  was  the  life  of  a  time  which  was  perhaps  less 
a  feast  of  reason  than  a  flow  of  soul.  The  truth  is, 
there  was  nothing  but  careless  stories  carelessly  told, 
and  jokes  and  laughing,  and  a  great  deal  of  mere  laugh 
ing  without  the  jokes,  the  whole  as  unlike  the  ideal  of 
a  literary  symposium  as  well  might  be;  but  there  was 
present  one  who  met  with  that  pleasant  Boston  com 
pany  for  the  first  time,  and  to  whom  Harte  attributed 
a  superstition  of  Boston  seriousness  not  realized  then 
and  there.  u  Look  at  him,"  he  said,  from  time  to  time. 
"  This  is  the  dream  of  his  life,"  arid  then  shouted  and 
choked  with  fun  at  the  difference  between  the  occasion 
and  the  expectation  he  would  have  imagined  in  his 
commensal's  mind.  At  a  dinner  long  after  in  London, 
where  several  of  the  commensals  of  that  time  met  again, 
with  other  literary  friends  of  a  like  age  and  stature, 
Harte  laid  his  arms  well  along  their  shoulders  as  they 
formed  in  a  half-circle  before  him,  and  screamed  out 
in  mocking  mirth  at  the  bulbous  favor  to  which  the 

297 


LITERARY   FRIENDS   AND   ACQUAINTANCE 

slim  shapes  of  the  earlier  date  had  come.  The  sight 
was  not  less  a  rapture  to  him  that  he  was  himself  the 
prey  of  the  same  practical  joke  from  the  passing  years. 
The  hair  which  the  years  had  wholly  swept  from  some 
of  those  thoughtful  brows,  or  left  spindling  autumnal 
spears,  "  or  few  or  none,"  to  "  shake  against  the  cold," 
had  whitened  to  a  wintry  snow  on  his,  while  his  mus 
tache  had  kept  its  youthful  black.  "  He  looks,"  one  of 
his  friends  said  to  another  as  they  walked  home  to 
gether,  "  like  a  French  marquis  of  the  ancien  regime." 
"Yes,"  the  other  assented,  thoughtfully,  "or  like  an 
American  actor  made  up  for  the  part." 

The  saying  closely  fitted  the  outward  fact,  but  was 
of  a  subtle  injustice  in  its  implication  of  anything  his 
trionic  in  Harte's  nature.  ISTever  was  any  man  less  a 
poseur ;  he  made  simply  and  helplessly  known  what  he 
was  at  any  and  every  moment,  and  he  would  join  the 
witness  very  cheerfully  in  enjoying  whatever  was  amus 
ing  in  the  disadvantage  to  himself.  In  the  course  of 
events,  which  were  in  his  case  so  very  human,  it  came 
about  on  a  subsequent  visit  of  his  to  Boston  that  an 
impatient  creditor  decided  to  right  himself  out  of  the 
proceeds  of  the  lecture  which  was  to  be  given,  and  had 
the  law  corporeally  present  at  the  house  of  the  friend 
where  Harte  dined,  and  in  the  anteroom  at  the  lecture- 
hall,  and  on  the  platform,  where  the  lecture  was  de 
livered  with  beautiful  aplomb  and  untroubled  charm. 
He  was  indeed  the  only  one  privy  to  the  law's  pres 
ence  who  was  not  the  least  affected  by  it,  so  that  when 
his  host  of  an  earlier  time  ventured  to  suggest,  "  Well, 
Harte,  this  is  the  old  literary  tradition;  this  is  the 
Fleet  business  over  again,"  he  joyously  smote  his  thigh 
and  crowed  out,  "  Yes,  the  Fleet !"  No  doubt  he  tasted 
all  the  delicate  humor  of  the  situation,  and  his  pleasure 
in  it  was  quite  unaffected. 

298 


A   BELATED    GUEST 

If  his  temperament  was  not  adapted  to  the  harsh  con 
ditions  of  the  elder  American  world,  it  might  very  well 
be  that  his  temperament  was   not   altogether  in  the 
wrong.     If  it  disabled  him  for  certain  experiences  of 
life,  it  was  the  source  of  what  was  most  delightful  in 
his  personality,  and  perhaps  most  beautiful  in  his  tal 
ent.    It  enabled  him  to  do  such  things  as  he  did  without 
being  at  all  anguished  for  the  things  he  did  not  do, 
and  indeed  could  not.     His  talent  was  not  a  facile 
gift ;  he  owned  that  he  often  went  day  after  day  to  his 
desk,  and  sat  down  before  that  yellow  post-office  paper 
on  which  he  liked  to  write  his  literature,  in  that  ex 
quisitely  refined  script  of  his,  without  being  able  to 
inscribe  a  line.     It  may  be  owned  for  him  that  though 
he  came  to  the  East  at  thirty-four,  which  ought  to  have 
been  the  very  prime  of  his  powers,  he  seemed  to  have 
arrived  after  the  age  of  observation  was  past  for  him. 
He  saw  nothing  aright,  either  in  Newport,  where  he 
went  to  live,  or  in  Xew  York,  where  he  sojourned,  or 
on  those  lecturing  tours  which  took  him   about  the 
whole  country;  or  if  he  saw  it  aright,  he  could  not 
report  it  aright,  or  would  not.     After  repeated  and 
almost  invariable  failures  to  deal  with  the  novel  char 
acters  and  circumstances  which  he  encountered  he  left 
off  trying,  and  frankly  went  back  to  the  semi-mythical 
California  he  had  half  discovered,  half  created,  and 
wrote  Bret  Harte  over  and  over  as  long  as  he  lived. 
This,  whether  he  did  it  from  instinct  or  from  reason, 
was  the  best  thing  he  could  do,  and  it  went  as  nearly 
as  might  be  to  satisfy  the  insatiable  English  fancy 
for  the  wild  America  no  longer  to  be  found  on  our 
map. 

It  is  imaginable  of  Harte  that  this  temperament  de 
fended  him  from  any  bitterness  in  the  disappointment 
he  may  have  shared  with  that  simple  American  public 

299 


LITERARY   FRIENDS   AND   ACQUAINTANCE 

which  in  the  early  eighteen-seventies  expected  any  and 
everything  of  him  in  fiction  and  drama.  The  long 
breath  was  not  his ;  he  could  not  write  a  novel,  though 
he  produced  the  like  of  one  or  two,  and  his  plays  were 
too  bad  for  the  stage,  or  else  too  good  for  it.  At  any 
rate,  they  could  not  keep  it,  even  when  they  got  it,  and 
they  denoted  the  fatigue  or  the  indifference  of  their 
author  in  being  dramatizations  of  his  longer  or  shorter 
fictions,  and  not  originally  dramatic  efforts.  The  di 
rection  in  which  his  originality  lasted  longest,  and  most 
strikingly  affirmed  his  power,  was  in  the  direction  of 
his  verse. 

Whatever  minds  there  may  be  about  Harte's  fiction 
finally,  there  can  hardly  be  more  than  one  mind  about 
his  poetry.  He  was  indeed  a  poet;  whether  he  wrote 
what  drolly  called  itself  "  dialect,"  or  wrote  language, 
he  was  a  poet  of  a  fine  and  fresh  touch.  It  must  be 
allowed  him  that  in  prose  as  Avell  he  had  the  inventive 
gift,  but  he  had  it  in  verse  far  more  importantly.  There 
are  lines,  phrases,  turns  in  his  poems,  characterizations, 
and  pictures  which  will  remain  as  enduririgly  as  any 
thing  American,  if  that  is  not  saying  altogether  too 
little  for  them.  In  poetry  he  rose  to  all  the  occasions 
he  made  for  himself,  though  he  could  not  rise  to  the 
occasions  made  for  him,  and  so  far  failed  in  the  de 
mands  he  acceded  to  for  a  Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem,  as 
to  come  to  that  august  Harvard  occasion  with  a  jingle 
so  trivial,  so  out  of  keeping,  so  inadequate  that  his 
enemies,  if  he  ever  truly  had  any,  must  have  suffered 
from  it  almost  as  much  as  his  friends.  He  himself 
did  not  suffer  from  his  failure,  from  having  read  before 
the  most  elect  assembly  of  the  country  a  poem  which 
would  hardly  have  served  the  careless  needs  of  an  in 
formal  dinner  after  the  speaking  had  begun;  he  took 
the  whole  disastrous  business  lightly,  gayly,  leniently, 

300 


A   BELATED    GUEST 

kindly,  as  that  golden  temperament  of  his  enabled  him 
to  take  all  the  good  or  bad  of  life. 

The  first  year  of  his  Eastern  sojourn  was  salaried  in 
a  sum  which  took  the  souls  of  all  his  young  contempo 
raries  with  wonder,  if  no  baser  passion,  in  the  days 
when  dollars  were  of  so  much  farther  flight  than  now, 
but  its  net  result  in  a  literary  return  to  his  publishers 
was  one  story  and  two  or  three  poems.  They  had  not 
profited  much  by  his  book,  which,  it  will  doubtless 
amaze  a  time  of  fifty  thousand  editions  selling  before 
their  publication,  to  learn  had  sold  only  thirty-five  hun 
dred  in  the  sixth  month  of  its  career,  as  Harte  himself, 

"  With  sick  and  scornful  looks  averse," 

confided  to  his  Cambridge  host  after  his  first  interview 
with  the  Boston  counting-room.  It  was  the  volume 
which  contained  "  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,"  and 
the  other  early  tales  which  made  him  a  continental,  and 
then  an  all  but  a  world-wide  fame.  Stories  that  had 
been  talked  over,  and  laughed  over,  and  cried  over  all 
up  and  down,  the  land,  that  had  been  received  with 
acclaim  by  criticism  almost  as  boisterous  as  their  popu 
larity,  and  recognized  as  the  promise  of  greater  things 
than  any  done  before  in  their  kind,  came  to  no  more 
than  this  pitiful  figure  over  the  booksellers'  counters. 
It  argued  much  for  the  publishers  that  in  spite  of  this 
stupefying  result  they  were  willing,  they  were  eager, 
to  pay  him  ten  thousand  dollars  for  whatever,  however 
much  or  little,  he  chose  to  write  in  a  year.  Their  offer 
was  made  in  Boston,  after  some  offers  mortifyingly 
mean,  and  others  insultingly  vague,  had  been  made  in 
Xew  York. 

It  was  not  his  fault  that  their  venture  proved  of  such 
slight  return  in  literary  material.  Harte  was  in  the 

301 


LITEEAEY   FRIENDS   AND   ACQUAINTANCE 

midst  of  new  and  alien  conditions,  and  he  had  always 
his  temperament  against  him,  as  well  as  the  reluctant 
if  not  the  niggard  nature  of  his  muse.  He  would  no 
doubt  have  been  only  too  glad  to  do  more  than  he  did 
for  the  money,  but  actually  if  not  literally  he  could  not 
do  more.  When  it  came  to  literature,  all  the  gay  im 
providence  of  life  forsook  him,  and  he  became  a  stern, 
rigorous,  exacting  self-master,  who  spared  himself  noth 
ing  to  achieve  the  perfection  at  which  he  aimed.  He 
was  of  the  order  of  literary  men  like  Goldsmith  and  Do 
Quincey,  and  Sterne  and  Steele,  in  his  relations  with 
the  outer  world,  but  in  his  relations  with  the  inner 
world  he  was  one  of  the  most  duteous  and  exemplary 
citizens.  There  was  nothing  of  his  easy-going  hilarity 
in  that  world ;  there  he  was  of  a  Puritanic  severity,  and 
of  a  conscience  that  forgave  him  110  pang.  Other  Cali 
fornia  writers  have  testified  to  the  fidelity  with  which 
he  did  his  work  as  editor.  He  made  himself  not  mere 
ly  the  arbiter  but  the  inspiration  of  his  contributors, 
and  in  a  region  where  literature  had  hardly  yet  replaced 
the  wild  sage-brush  of  frontier  journalism,  he  made  the 
sand-lots  of  San  Francisco  to  blossom  as  the  rose,  and 
created  a  literary  periodical  of  the  first  class  on  the 
borders  of  civilization. 

It  is  useless  to  wonder  now  what  would  have  been  his 
future  if  the  publisher  of  the  Overland  Monthly  had 
been  of  imagination  or  capital  enough  to  meet  the  de 
mand  which  Harte  dimly  intimated  to  his  Cambridge 
host  as  the  condition  of  his  remaining  in  California. 
Publishers,  men  with  sufficient  capital,  are  of  a  greatly 
varying  gift  in  the  regions  of  prophecy,  and  he  of  the 
Overland  'Montlihj  was  not  to  be  blamed  if  he  could 
not  foresee  his  account  in  paying  Harte  ten  thousand 
a  year  to  continue  editing  the  magazine.  He  did  ac 
cording  to  his  lights,  and  Harte  came  to  the  East,  and 

302 


A   BELATED   GUEST 

then  went  to  England,  where  his  last  twenty-five  years 
were  passed  in  cultivating  the  wild  plant  of  his  Pacific 
Slope  discovery.  It  was  always  the  same  plant,  leaf 
and  flower  and  fruit,  but  it  perennially  pleased  the 
constant  English  world,  and  thence  the  European  world, 
though  it  presently  failed  of  much  delighting  these  fas 
tidious  States.  Probably  he  would  have  done  some 
thing  else  if  he  could;  he  did  not  keep  on  doing  the 
wild  mining-camp  thing  because  it  was  the  easiest,  but 
because  it  was  for  him  the  only  possible  thing.  Very 
likely  he  might  have  preferred  not  doing  anything. 


IV 


The  joyous  visit  of  a  week,  which  has  been  here  so 
poorly  recovered  from  the  past,  came  to  an  end,  and  the 
host  went  with  his  guest  to  the  station  in  as  much 
vehicular  magnificence  as  had  marked  his  going  to  meet 
him  there.  Harte  was  no  longer  the  alarming  portent 
of  the  earlier  time,  but  an  experience  of  unalloyed  de 
light.  You  must  love  a  person  whose  worst  trouble- 
giving  was  made  somehow  a  favor  by  his  own  uncon 
sciousness  of  the  trouble,  and  it  was  a  most  flattering 
triumph  to  have  got  him  in  time,  or  only  a  little  late, 
to  so  many  luncheons  and  dinners.  If  only  now  he 
could  be  got  to  the  train  in  time  the  victory  would  be 
complete,  the  happiness  of  the  visit  without  a  flaw. 
Success  seemed  to  crown  the  fondest  hope  in  this  re 
spect.  The  train  had  not  yet  left  the  station;  there 
stood  the  parlor-car  which  Harte  had  seats  in;  and  he 
was  followed  aboard  for  those  last  words  in  which  peo 
ple  try  to  linger  out  pleasures  they  have  known  together. 
In  this  case  the  sweetest  of  the  pleasures  had  been  sit 
ting  up  late  after  those  dinners,  and  talking  them  over, 

303 


LITERARY   FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

and  then  degenerating  from  that  talk  into  the  mere 
giggle  and  making  giggle  which  Charles  Lamb  found 
the  best  thing  in  life.  It  had  come  to  this  as  the  host 
and  guest  sat  together  for  those  parting  moments,  when 
Ilarte  suddenly  started  up  in  the  discovery  of  having 
forgotten  to  get  some  cigars.  They  rushed  out  of  the 
train  together,  and  after  a  wild  descent  upon  the  cigar- 
counter  of  the  restaurant,  Harte  rushed  back  to  his  car. 
But  by  this  time  the  train  was  already  moving  with 
that  deceitful  slowness  of  the  departing  train,  and 
Ilarte  had  to  clamber  up  the  steps  of  the  rearmost 
platform.  His  host  clambered  after,  to  make  sure  that 
he  was  aboard,  which  done,  he  dropped  to  the  ground, 
while  Ilarte  drew  out  of  the  station,  blandly  smiling, 
and  waving  his  hand  with  a  cigar  in  it,  in  picturesque 
farewell  from  the  platform. 

Then  his  host  realized  that  he  had  dropped  to  the 
ground  barely  in  time  to  escape  being  crushed  against 
the  side  of  the  archway  that  sharply  descended  beside 
the  steps  of  the  train,  and  lie  went  and  sat  down  in  that 
handsomest  hack,  and  was  for  a  moment  deathly  sick 
at  the  danger  that  had  not  realized  itself  to  him  in 
season.  To  be  sure,  he  was  able,  long  after,  to  adapt 
the  incident  to  the  exigencies  of  fiction,  and  to  have  a 
character,  not  otherwise  to  be  conveniently  disposed  of, 
actually  crushed  to  death  between  a  moving  train  and 
such  an  archway. 

Besides,  he  had  then,  and  always  afterward,  the  im 
mense  supercompensation  of  the  memories  of  that  visit 
from  one  of  the  most  charming  personalities  in  the 
world, 

"In  life's  morning  march  when  his  bosom  was  young," 

and  when  infinitely  less  would  have  sated  him.  Now 
death  has  come  to  join  its  vague  conjectures  to  the 

304 


A   BELATED    GUEST 

broken  expectations  of  life,  and  that  blithe  spirit  is 
elsewhere.  But  nothing  can  take  from  him  who  re 
mains  the  witchery  of  that  most  winning  presence. 
Still  it  looks  smiling  from  the  platform  of  the  car, 
and  casts  a  farewell  of  mock  heartbreak  from  it.  Still 
a  gay  laugh  comes  across  the  abysm  of  the  years  that 
are  now  numbered,  and  out  of  somewhere  the  hearer's 
sense  is  rapt  with  the  mellow  cordial  of  a  voice  that 
was  like  no  other. 


pajt  (Ten 

MY    MARK    TWAIN 
I 

IT  was  in  the  little  office  of  James  T.  Fields,  over 
the  book-store  of  Ticknor  &  Fields,  at  124  Tremont 
Street,  Boston,  that  I  first  met  my  friend  of  now  forty- 
four  years,  Samuel  L.  Clemens.  Mr.  Fields  was  then 
the  editor  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  I  was  his 
proud  and  glad  assistant,  with  a  pretty  free  hand  as 
to  manuscripts,  and  an  unmanacled  command  of  the 
book  -  notices  at  the  end  of  the  magazine.  I  wrote 
nearly  all  of  them  myself,  and  in  1869  I  had  written 
rather  a  long  notice  of  a  book  just  winning  its  way  to 
universal  favor.  In  this  review  I  had  intimated  my 
reservations  concerning  the  Innocents  Abroad,  but  I 
had  the  luck,  if  not  the  sense,  to  recognize  that  it  was 
such  fun  as  we  had  not  had  before.  I  forget  just 
what  I  said  in  praise  of  it,  and  it  does  not  matter; 
it  is  enough  that  I  praised  it  enough  to  satisfy  the 
author.  He  now  signified  as  much,  and  he  stamped 
his  gratitude  into  my  memory  with  a  story  wonder 
fully  allegorizing  the  situation,  which  the  mock  mod 
esty  of  print  forbids  my  repeating  here.  Through 
out  my  long  acquaintance  with  him  his  graphic  touch 
was  always  allowing  itself  a  freedom  which  I  cannot 
bring  my  fainter  pencil  to  illustrate.  He  had  the 
21  307 


LITEEARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

Southwestern,  the  Lincolnian,  the  Elizabethan  breadth 
of  parlance,  which  I  suppose  one  ought  not  to  call 
coarse  without  calling  one's  self  prudish;  and  I  was 
often  hiding  away  in  discreet  holes  and  corners  the 
letters  in  which  he  had  loosed  his  bold  fancy  to  stoop 
on  rank  suggestion;  I  could  not  bear  to  burn  them, 
and  I  could  not,  after  the  first  reading,  quite  bear  to 
look  at  them.  I  shall  best  give  my  feeling  on  this  point 
by  saying  that  in  it  he  was  Shakespearian,  or  if  his 
ghost  will  not  suffer  me  the  word,  then  he  was  Baconian. 
At  the  time  of  our  first  meeting,  which  must  have 
been  well  toward  the  winter,  Clemens  (as  I  must  call 
him  instead  of  Mark  Twain,  which  seemed  always 
somehow  to  mask  him  from  my  personal  sense)  was 
wearing  a  sealskin  coat,  with  the  fur  out,  in  the  satis 
faction  of  a  caprice,  or  the  love  of  strong  effect  which 
he  was  apt  to  indulge  through  life.  I  do  not  know 
what  droll  comment  was  in  Fields's  mind  with  respect 
to  this  garment,  but  probably  he  felt  that  here  was 
an  original  who  was  not  to  be  brought  to  any  Bostonian 
book  in  the  judgment  of  his  vivid  qualities.  With  his 
crest  of  dense  red  hair,  and  the  wide  sweep  of  his 
flaming  mustache,  Clemens  was  not  discordantly  clothed 
in  that  sealskin  coat,  which  afterward,  in  spite  of  his 
own  warmth  in  it,  sent  the  cold  chills  through  me  when 
I  once  accompanied  it  down  Broadway,  and  shared  the 
immense  publicity  it  won  him.  He  had  always  a  relish 
for  personal  effect,  which  expressed  itself  in  the  white 
suit  of  complete  serge  which  he  wore  in  his  last  years, 
and  in  the  Oxford  gown  which  he  put  on  for  every 
possible  occasion,  and  said  he  would  like  to  wear  all  the 
time.  That  was  not  vanity  in  him,  but  a  keen  feeling 
for  costume  which  the  severity  of  our  modern  tailor 
ing  forbids  men,  though  it  flatters  women  to  every  ex 
cess  in  it;  yet  he  also  enjoyed  the  shock,  the  offence, 

308 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

the  pang  which  it  gave  the  sensibilities  of  others.  Then 
there  were  times  he  played  these  pranks  for  pure  fun, 
and  for  the  pleasure  of  the  witness.  Once  I  remember 
seeing  him  come  into  his  drawing-room  at  Hartford  in 
a  pair  of  white  cowskin  slippers,  with  the  hair  out,  and 
do  a  crippled  colored  uncle  to  the  joy  of  all  beholders. 
Or,  I  must  not  say  all,  for  I  remember  also  the  dismay 
of  Mrs.  Clemens,  and  her  low,  despairing  cry  of,  "  Oh, 
Youth!"  That  was  her  name  for  him  among  their 
friends,  and  it  fitted  him  as  no  other  would,  though 
I  fancied  with  her  it  was  a  shrinking  from  his  bap 
tismal  Samuel,  or  the  vernacular  Sam  of  his  earlier 
companionships.  He  was  a  youth  to  the  end  of  his 
days,  the  heart  of  a  boy  with  the  head  of  a  sage;  the 
heart  of  a  good  boy,  or  a  bad  boy,  but  always  a  wilful 
boy,  and  wilfulest  to  show  himself  out  at  every  time 
for  just  the  boy  he  was. 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

the  pang  which  it  gave  the  sensibilities  of  others.  Then 
there  were  times  he  played  these  pranks  for  pure  fun, 
and  for  the  pleasure  of  the  witness.  Once  I  remember 
seeing  him  come  into  his  drawing-room  at  Hartford  in 
a  pair  of  white  cowskin  slippers,  with  the  hair  out,  and 
do  a  crippled  colored  uncle  to  the  joy  of  all  beholders. 
Or,  I  must  not  say  all,  for  I  remember  also  the  dismay 
of  Mrs.  Clemens,  and  her  low,  despairing  cry  of,  "  Oh, 
Youth!"  That  was  her  name  for  him  among  their 
friends,  and  it  fitted  him  as  no  other  would,  though 
I  fancied  with  her  it  was  a  shrinking  from  his  bap 
tismal  Samuel,  or  the  vernacular  Sam  of  his  earlier 
companionships.  He  was  a  youth  to  the  end  of  his 
days,  the  heart  of  a  boy  with  the  head  of  a  sage;  the 
heart  of  a  good  boy,  or  a  bad  boy,  but  always  a  wilful 
boy,  and  wilfulest  to  show  himself  out  at  every  time 
for  just  the  boy  he  was. 


II 

THERE  is  a  gap  in  my  recollections  of  Clemens,  which 
I  think  is  of  a  year  or  two,  for  the  next  tiling  I  remem 
ber  of  him  is  meeting  him  at  a  lunch  in  Boston  given 
us  by  that  genius  of  hospitality,  the  tragically  destined 
Kalph  Keeler,  author  of  one  of  the  most  unjustly  for 
gotten  books,  Vagabond  Adventures,  a  true  bit  of  pica 
resque  autobiography.  Keeler  never  had  any  money,  to 
the  general  knowledge,  and  he  never  borrowed,  and  he 
could  not  have  had  credit  at  the  restaurant  where  he 
invited  us  to  feast  at  his  expense.  There  was  T.  B. 
Aldrich,  there  was  J.  T.  Fields,  much  the  oldest  of 
our  company,  who  had  just  freed  himself  from  the 
trammels  of  the  publishing  business,  and  was  feeling 
his  freedom  in  every  word ;  there  was  Bret  Harte,  who 
had  lately  come  East  in  his  princely  progress  from 
California;  and  there  was  Clemens.  Nothing  remains 
to  me  of  the  happy  time  but  a  sense  of  idle  and  aim 
less  and  joyful  talk-play,  beginning  and  ending  no 
where,  of  eager  laughter,  of  countless  good  stories  from 
Fields,  of  a  heat  -  lightning  shimmer  of  wit  from  Al 
drich,  of  an  occasional  concentration  of  our  joint  mock 
eries  upon  our  host,  who  took  it  gladly;  and  amid  the 
discourse,  so  little  improving,  but  so  full  of  good  fel 
lowship,  Bret  Harte's  fleering  dramatization  of  Clem- 
ens's  mental  attitude  toward  a  symposium  of  Boston 
illuminates.  "  Why,  fellows,"  he  spluttered,  "  this  is 
the  dream  of  Mark's  life,"  and  I  remember  the  glance 

310 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

from  under  Clemens's  feathery  eyebrows  which  be 
trayed  his  enjoyment  of  the  fun.  We  had  beefsteak 
with  mushrooms,  which  in  recognition  of  their  shape 
Aldrich  hailed  as  shoe-pegs,  and  to  crown  the  feast  we 
had  an  omelette  souffle,  which  the  waiter  brought  in 
as  flat  as  a  pancake,  amid  our  shouts  of  congratula 
tions  to  poor  Keeler,  who  took  them  with  appreciative 
submission.  It  was  in  every  way  what  a  Boston  lit 
erary  lunch  ought  not  to  have  been  in  the  popular  ideal 
which  Harte  attributed  to  Clemens. 

Our  next  meeting  was  at  Hartford,  or,  rather,  at 
Springfield,  where  Clemens  greeted  us  on  the  way  to 
Hartford.  Aldrich  was  going  on  to  be  his  guest,  and 
I  was  going  to  be  Charles  Dudley  Warner's,  but  Clem 
ens  had  come  part  way  to  welcome  us  both.  In  the 
good  fellowship  of  that  cordial  neighborhood  we  had 
two  such  days  as  the  aging  sun  no  longer  shines  on  in 
his  round.  There  was  constant  running  in  and  out  of 
friendly  houses  where  the  lively  hosts  and  guests  called 
one  another  by  their  Christian  names  or  nicknamee, 
and  no  such  vain  ceremony  as  knocking  or  ringing  at 
doors.  Clemens  was  then  building  the  stately  mansion 
in  which  he  satisfied  his  love  of  magnificence  as  if  it 
had  been  another  sealskin  coat,  and  he  was  at  the  crest 
of  the  prosperity  which  enabled  him  to  humor  every 
whim  or  extravagance.  The  house  was  the  design  of 
that  most  original  artist,  Edward  Potter,  who  once, 
when  hard  pressed  by  incompetent  curiosity  for  the 
name  of  his  style  in  a  certain  church,  proposed  that  it 
should  be  called  the  English  violet  order  of  archi 
tecture;  and  this  house  was  so  absolutely  suited  to 
the  owner's  humor  that  I  suppose  there  never  was  an 
other  house  like  it ;  but  its  character  must  be  for  recog 
nition  farther  along  in  these  reminiscences.  The  vivid- 
est  impression  which  Clemens  gave  us  two  ravenous 

311 


LITEEARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

young  Boston  authors  was  of  the  satisfying,  the  sur 
feiting  nature  of  subscription  publication.  An  army 
of  agents  was  overrunning  the  country  with,  the  pros 
pectuses  of  his  books,  and  delivering  them  by  the  scores 
of  thousands  in  completed  sale.  Of  the  Innocents 
1  Abroad  he  said,  "  It  sells  right  along  just  like  the 
Bible,"  and  Roughing  It  was  swiftly  following,  with 
out  perhaps  ever  quite  overtaking  it  in  popularity.  But 
he  lectured  Aldrich  and  me  on  the  folly  of  that  mode 
of  publication  in  the  trade  which  we  had  thought  it 
the  highest  success  to  achieve  a  chance  in.  "  Anything 
but  subscription  publication  is  printing  for  private  cir 
culation,"  he  maintained,  and  he  so  won  upon  our  greed 
and  hope  that  on  the  way  back  to  Boston  we  planned 
the  joint  authorship  of  a  volume  adapted  to  subscrip 
tion  publication.  We  got  a  very  good  name  for  it,  as 
we  believed,  in  Memorable  Murders,  and  we  never  got 
farther  with  it,  but  by  the  time  we  reached  Boston  we 
were  rolling  in  wealth  so  deep  that  we  could  hardly 
walk  home  in  the  frugal  fashion  by  which  we  still 
thought  it  best  to  spare  car  fare ;  carriage  fare  we  did 
not  dream  of  even  in  that  opulence. 


Ill 


THE  visits  to  Hartford  which  had  begun  with  this 
affluence  continued  without  actual  increase  of  riches 
for  me,  but  now  I  went  alone,  and  in  Warner's  Euro 
pean  and  Egyptian  absences  I  formed  the  habit  of 
going  to  Clemens.  By  this  time  he  was  in  his  new 
house,  where  he  used  to  give  me  a  royal  chamber  on 
the  ground  floor,  and  come  in  at  night  after  I  had  gone 
to  bed  to  take  off  the  burglar  alarm  so  that  the  family 
should  not  be  roused  if  anybody  tried  to  get  in  at  my 
window.  This  would  be  after  we  had  sat  up  late,  he 
smoking  the  last  of  his  innumerable  cigars,  and  sooth 
ing  his  tense  nerves  with  a  mild  hot  Scotch,  while  we 
both  talked  and  talked  and  talked,  of  everything  in  the 
heavens  and  on  the  earth,  and  the  waters  under  the 
earth.  After  two  days  of  this  talk  I  would  come  away 
hollow,  realizing  myself  best  in  the  image  of  one  of 
those  locust-shells  which  you  find  sticking  to  the  bark 
of  trees  at  the  end  of  summer.  Once,  after  some  such 
bout  of  brains,  we  went  down  to  New  York  together, 
and  sat  facing  each  other  in  the  Pullman  smoker  with 
out  passing  a  syllable  till  we  had  occasion  to  say, 
"  Well,  we're  there."  Then,  with  our  installation  in 
a  now  vanished  hotel  (the  old  Brunswick,  to  be 
specific),  the  talk  began  again  with  the  inspiration 
of  the  novel  environment,  and  went  on  and  on.  We 
wished  to  be  asleep,  but  we  could  not  stop,  and  he 
lounged  through  the  rooms  in  the  long  nightgown  which 

313 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

he  always  wore  in  preference  to  the  pajamas  which  he 
despised,  and  told  the  story  of  his  life,  the  inexhaust 
ible,  the  fairy,  the  Arabian  Nights  story,  which  I  could 
never  tire  of  even  when  it  began  to  be  told  over  again. 
Or  at  times  he  would  reason  high— 

"  Of  Providence,  foreknowledge,  will  and  fate, 
Fixed  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute," 

walking  up  and  down,  and  halting  now  and  then,  with 
a  fine  toss  and  slant  of  his  shaggy  head,  as  some  bold 
thought  or  splendid  joke  struck  him. 

He  was  in  those  days  a  constant  attendant  at  the 
church  of  his  great  friend,  the  Rev.  Joseph  II.  Twichell, 
and  at  least  tacitly  far  from  the  entire  negation  he 
came  to  at  last.  I  should  say  he  had  hardly  yet  ex 
amined  the  grounds  of  his  passive  acceptance  of  his 
wife's  belief,  for  it  was  hers  and  not  his,  and  he  held  it 
unscanned  in  the  beautiful  and  tender  loyalty  to  her 
which  was  the  most  moving  quality  of  his  most  faithful 
soul.  I  make  bold  to  speak  of  the  love  between  them, 
becaiise  without  it  I  could  not  make  him  known  to 
others  as  he  was  known  to  me.  It  was  a  greater  part 
of  him  than  the  love  of  most  men  for  their  wives,  and 
she  merited  all  the  worship  he  could  give  her,  all  the 
devotion,  all  the  implicit  obedience,  by  her  surpassing- 
force  and  beauty  of  character.  She  was  in  a  way  the 
loveliest  person  I  have  ever  seen,  the  gentlest,  the  kind 
est,  without  a  touch  of  weakness;  she  united  wonder 
ful  tact  with  wonderful  truth;  and  Clemens  not  only 
accepted  her  rule  implicitly,  but  he  rejoiced,  he  gloried 
in  it.  I  am  not  sure  that  he  noticed  all  her  goodness 
in  the  actions  that  made  it  a  heavenly  vision  to  others, 
he  so  had  the  habit  of  her  goodness;  but  if  there  was 
any  forlorn  and  helpless  creature  in  the  room  Mrs. 

314 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

Clemens  was  somehow  promptly  at  his  side  or  hers; 
she  was  always  seeking  occasion  of  kindness  to  those 
in  her  household  or  out  of  it ;  she  loved  to  let  her  heart 
go  beyond  the  reach  of  her  hand,  and  imagined  the 
whole  hard  and  suffering  world  with  compassion  for  its 
structural  as  well  as  incidental  wrongs.  I  suppose  she 
had  her  ladyhood  limitations,  her  female  fears  of  eti 
quette  and  convention,  but  she  did  not  let  them  hamper 
the  wild  and  splendid  generosity  with  which  Clemens 
rebelled  against  the  social  stupidities  and  cruelties.  She 
had  been  a  lifelong  invalid  when  he  met  her,  and  he 
liked  to  tell  the  beautiful  story  of  their  courtship  to  each 
new  friend  whom  he  found  capable  of  feeling  its  beauty 
or  worthy  of  hearing  it.  Naturally,  her  father  had  hesi 
tated  to  give  her  into  the  keeping  of  the  young  strange 
Westerner,  who  had  risen  up  out  of  the  unknown  with 
his  giant  reputation  of  burlesque  humorist,  and  de 
manded  guaranties,  demanded  proofs.  "  He  asked 
me,"  Clemens  would  say,  "  if  I  couldn't  give  him  the 
names  of  people  who  knew  me  in  California,  and  when 
it  was  time  to  hear  from  them  I  heard  from  him. 
'  Well,  Mr.  Clemens,'  he  said,  '  nobody  seems  to  havo 
a  very  good  word  for  you.'  I  hadn't  referred  him  to 
people  that  I  thought  were  going  to  whitewash  me.  I 
thought  it  was  all  up  with  me,  but  I  was  disappointed. 
'  So  I  guess  I  shall  have  to  back  you  myself.' ' 

Whether  this  made  him  faithfuler  to  the  trust  put 
in  him  I  cannot  say,  but  probably  not;  it  was  always 
in  him  to  be  faithful  to  any  trust,  and  in  proportion 
as  a  trust  of  his  own  was  betrayed  he  was  ruthlessly 
and  implacably  resentful.  But  I  wish  now  to  speak 
of  the  happiness  of  that  household  in  Hartford  which 
responded  so  perfectly  to  the  ideals  of  the  mother  when 
the  three  daughters,  so  lovely  and  so  gifted,  were  yet 
little  children.  There  had  been  a  boy,  and  "  Yes,  / 

315 


LITEKAEY    FEIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

killed  him,"  Clemens  once  said,  with  the  unsparing 
self-blame  in  which  he  would  wreak  an  unavailing  re 
gret.  He  meant  that  he  had  taken  the  child  out  im- 

D 

prudently,  and  the  child  had  taken  the  cold  which  he 
died  of,  but  it  was  by  no  means  certain  this  was  through 
its  father's  imprudence.  I  never  heard  him  speak  of 
his  son  except  that  once,  but  no  doubt  in  his  deep  heart 
his  loss  was  irreparably  present.  He  was  a  very  tender 
father  and  delighted  in  the  minds  of  his  children,  but 
he  was  wise  enough  to  leave  their  training  altogether 
to  the  wisdom  of  their  mother.  He  left  them  to  that 
in  everything,  keeping  for  himself  the  pleasure  of 
teaching  them  little  scenes  of  drama,  learning  lan 
guages  with  them,  and  leading  them  in  singing.  They 
came  to  the  table  with  their  parents,  and  could  have 
set  him  an  example  in  behavior  when,  in  moments  of 
intense  excitement,  he  used  to  leave  his  place  and  walk 
up  and  down  the  room,  flying  his  napkin  and  talking 
and  talking. 

It  was  after  his  first  English  sojourn  that  I  used  to 
visit  him,  and  he  was  then  full  of  praise  of  everything 
English:  the  English  personal  independence  and  pub 
lic  spirit,  and  hospitality,  and  truth.  He  liked  to  tell 
stories  in  proof  of  their  virtues,  but  he  was  not  blind 
to  the  defects  of  their  virtues :  their  submissive  ac 
ceptance  of  caste,  their  callousness  with  strangers,  their 
bluntness  with  one  another.  Mrs.  Clemens  had  been 
in  a  way  to  suffer  socially  more  than  he,  and  she 
praised  the  English  less.  She  had  sat  after  dinner 
with  ladies  who  snubbed  and  ignored  one  another,  and 
left  her  to  find  her  own  amusement  in  the  absence  of 
the  attention  with  which  Americans  perhaps  cloy  their 
guests,  but  which  she  could  not  help  preferring.  In 
their  successive  sojourns  among  them  I  believe  he  came 
to  like  the  English  less  and  she  more;  the  fine  delight 

316 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

of  his  first  acceptance  among  them  did  not  renew  itself 
till  his  Oxford  degree  was  given  him ;  then  it  made  his 
cup  run  over,  and  he  was  glad  the  whole  world  should 
see  it. 

His  wife  would  not  chill  the  ardor  of  his  early  Anglo 
mania,  and  in  this,  as  in  everything,  she  wished  to 
humor  him  to  the  utmost.  iSTo  one  could  have  realized 
more  than  she  his  essential  fineness,  his  innate  noble 
ness.  Marriages  are  what  the  parties  to  them  alone 
really  know  them  to  be,  but  from  the  outside  I  should 
say  that  this  marriage  was  one  of  the  most  perfect. 
It  lasted  in  his  absolute  devotion  to  the  day  of  her 
death,  that  delayed  long  in  cruel  suffering,  and  that 
left  one  side  of  him  in  lasting  night.  From  Florence 
there  came  to  me  heartbreaking  letters  from  him  about 
the  torture  she  was  undergoing,  and  at  last  a  letter  say 
ing  she  was  dead,  with  the  simple-hearted  cry,  "  I  wish 
I  was  with  Livy."  I  do  not  know  why  I  have  left 
saying  till  now  that  she  was  a  very  beautiful  woman, 
classically  regular  in  features,  with  black  hair  smooth 
over  her  forehead,  and  with  tenderly  peering,  myopic 
eyes,  always  behind  glasses,  and  a  smile  of  angelic  kind 
ness.  But  this  kindness  went  with  a  sense  of  humor 
which  qualified  her  to  appreciate  the  self-lawed  genius 
of  a  man  who  will  be  remembered  with  the  great  hu 
morists  of  all  time,  with  Cervantes,  with  Swift,  or  with' 
any  others  worthy  his  company;  none  of  them  was  his 
equal  in  humanity. 


IV 

CLEMENS  had  appointed  himself,  with  the  architect's 
connivance,  a  luxurious  study  over  the  library  in  his 
new  house,  but  as  his  children  grew  older  this  study, 
with  its  carved  and  cushioned  arm-chairs,  was  given 
over  to  them  for  a  school-room,  and  he  took  the  room 
above  his  stable,  which  had  been  intended  for  his  coach 
man.  There  we  used  to  talk  together,  when  we  were 
not  walking  and  talking  together,  until  he  discovered 
that  he  could  make  a  more  commodious  use  of  the 
billiard-room  at  the  top  of  his  house,  for  the  purposes 
of  literature  and  friendship.  It  was  pretty  cold  up 
there  in  the  early  spring  and  late  fall  weather  with 
which  I  chiefly  associate  the  place,  but  by  lighting  up 
all  the  gas-burners  and  kindling  a  reluctant  fire  on  the 
hearth  we  could  keep  it  well  above  freezing.  Clemens 
could  also  push  the  balls  about,  and,  without  rivalry 
from  me,  who  could  no  more  play  billiards  than  smoke, 
could  win  endless  games  of  pool,  while  he  carried 
points  of  argument  against  imaginable  differers  in 
opinion.  Here  he  wrote  many  of  his  tales  and  sketches, 
and  for  anything  I  know  some  of  his  books.  I  par 
ticularly  remember  his  reading  me  here  his  first  rough 
sketch  of  Captain  Stormfield's  Visit  to  Heaven,  with 
the  real  name  of  the  captain,  whom  I  knew  already 
from  his  many  stories  about  him. 

We  had  a  peculiar  pleasure  in  looking  off  from  the 
high  windows  on  the  pretty  Hartford  landscape,  and 

318 


down  from  them  into  the  tops  of  the  trees  clothing  the 
hillside  by  which  his  house  stood.  We  agreed  that 
there  was  a  novel  charm  in  trees  seen  from  such  a  van 
tage,  far  surpassing  that  of  the  farther  scenery.  lie 
had  not  been  a  country  boy  for  nothing;  rather  he  had 
been,  a  country  boy,  or,  still  better,  a  village  boy,  for 
everything  that  Mature  can  offer  the  young  of  our 
species,  and  no  aspect  of  her  was  lost  on  him.  We  were 
natives  of  the  same  vast  Mississippi  Valley;  and  Mis 
souri  was  not  so  far  from  Ohio  but  that  we  were  akin 
in  our  first  knowledges  of  woods  and  fields  as  we  were 
in  our  early  parlance.  I  had  outgrown  the  use  of 
mine  through  my  greater  bookishness,  but  I  gladly 
recognized  the  phrases  which  he  employed  for  their 
lasting  juiciness  and  the  long-remembered  savor  they 
had  on  his  mental  palate. 

I  have  elsewhere  sufficiently  spoken  of  his  unso 
phisticated  use  of  words,  of  the  diction  which  forma 
the  backbone  of  his  manly  style.  If  I  mention  my 
own  greater  bookishness,  by  which  I  mean  his  less 
quantitative  reading,  it  is  to  give  myself  better  oc 
casion  to  note  that  he  was  always  reading  some  vital 
book.  It  might  be  some  out-of-the-way  book,  but  it  had 
the  root  of  the  human  matter  in  it:  a  volume  of  great 
trials ;  one  of  the  supreme  autobiographies ;  a  signal 
passage  of  history,  a  narrative  of  travel,  a  story  of 
captivity,  which  gave  him  life  at  first-hand.  As  I  re 
member,  he  did  not  care  much  for  fiction,  and  in  that 
sort  he  had  certain  distinct  loathings;  there  were  cer 
tain  authors  whose  names  he  seemed  not  so  much  to 
pronounce  as  to  spew  out  of  his  mouth.  Goldsmith  was 
one  of  these,  but  his  prime  abhorrence  was  my  dear 
and  honored  prime  favorite,  Jane  Austen.  He  once 
said  to  me,  I  suppose  after  he  had  been  reading  some 
of  my  unsparing  praises  of  her — I  am  always  prais- 

319 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

ing  her,  "  You  seem  to  think  that  woman  could  write," 
and  he  forbore  withering  me  with  his  scorn,  apparently 
because  we  had  been  friends  so  long,  and  he  more 
pitied  than  hated  me  for  my  bad  taste.  He  seemed  not 
to  have  any  preferences  among  novelists ;  or  at  least 
I  never  heard  him  express  any.  He  used  to  read  the 
modern  novels  I  praised,  in  or  out  of  print;  but  I  do 
not  think  he  much  liked  reading  fiction.  As  for  plays, 
he  detested  the  theatre,  and  said  he  would  as  lief  do  a 
sum  as  follow  a  plot  on  the  stage.  He  could  not,  or  did 
not,  give  any  reasons  for  his  literary  abhorrences,  and 
perhaps  he  really  had  none.  But  he  could  have  said 
very  distinctly,  if  he  had  needed,  why  he  liked  the 
books  he  did.  I  was  away  at  the  time  of  his  great 
Browning  passion,  and  I  know  of  it  chiefly  from  hear 
say;  but  at  the  time  Tolstoy  was  doing  what  could  be 
done  to  make  ine  over  Clemens  wrote,  "  That  man 
seems  to  have  been  to  you  what  Browning  was  to  me." 
I  do  not  know  that  he  had  other  favorites  among  the 
poets,  but  he  had  favorite  poems  which  he  liked  to  read 
to  you,  and  he  read,  of  course,  splendidly.  I  have  for 
gotten  what  piece  of  John  Hay's  it  was  that  he  liked 
so  much,  but  I  remembered  how  he  fiercely  revelled 
in  the  vengefulness  of  William  Morris's  Sir  Guy  of  the 
Dolorous  Blast,  and  how  he  especially  exalted  in  the 
lines  which  tell  of  the  supposed  speaker's  joy  in  slaying 
the  murderer  of  his  brother : 

"  I  am  threescore  years  and  ten, 

And  my  hair  is  nigh  turned  gray, 
But  I  am  glad  to  think  of  the  moment  when 
I  took  his  life  away." 

Generally,  I  fancy  his  pleasure  in  poetry  was  not  great, 
and  I  do  not  believe  he  cared  much  for  the  convention 
ally  accepted  masterpieces  of  literature.  He  liked  to 

320 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

find  out  good  things  and  great  things  for  himself; 
sometimes  he  would  discover  these  in  a  masterpiece 
new  to  him  alone,  and  then,  if  you  brought  his  igno 
rance  home  to  him,  he  enjoyed  it,  and  enjoyed  it  the 
more  the  more  you  rubbed  it  in. 

Of  all  the  literary  men  I  have  known  he  was  the 
most  unlitcrary  in  his  make  and  manner.  I  do  not 
know  whether  he  had  any  acquaintance  with  Latin, 
but  I  believe  not  the  least ;  German  he  knew  pretty 
well,  and  Italian  enough  late  in  life  to  have  fun  with 
it;  but  he  used  English  in  all  its  alien  derivations  as 
if  it  were  native  to  his  own  air,  as  if  it  had  come  up 
out  of  American,  out  of  Missourian  ground.  His  style 
was  what  we  know,  for  good  and  for  bad,  but  his 
manner,  if  I  may  difference  the  two,  was  as  entirely 
his  own  as  if  no  one  had  ever  written  before.  I  have 
noted  before  this  how  he  was  not  enslaved  to  the  con- 
secutiveness  in  writing  which  the  rest  of  us  try  to  keep 
chained  to.  That  is,  he  wrote  as  he  thought,  and  as  all 
men  think,  without  sequence,  without  an  eye  to  what 
went  before  or  should  come  after.  If  something  be 
yond  or  beside  what  he  was  saying  occurred  to  him, 
he  invited  it  into  his  page,  and  made  it  as  much  at 
home  there  as  the  nature  of  it  would  suffer  him.  Then, 
when  he  Avas  through  with  the  welcoming  of  this  casual 
and  unexpected  guest,  he  would  go  back  to  the  company 
he  was  entertaining,  and  keep  on  with  what  he  had 
been  talking  about.  He  observed  this  manner  in  the 
construction  of  his  sentences,  and  the  arrangement  of 
his  chapters,  and  the  ordering  or  disordering  of  his 
compilations.  I  helped  him  with  a  Library  of  Hu 
mor,  which  he  once  edited,  and  when  I  had  done  my 
work  according  to  tradition,  with  authors,  times,  and 
topics  carefully  studied  in  due  sequence,  he  tore  it  all 
apart,  and  "  chucked  "  the  pieces  in  wherever  the  fancy^ 

321 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

for  them  took  him  at  the  moment.  He  was  right:  wo 
were  not  making  a  text-book,  but  a  book  for  the  pleas 
ure  rather  than  the  instruction  of  the  reader,  and  he 
did  not  see  why  the  principle  on  which  he  built  his 
travels  and  reminiscences  and  tales  and  novels  should 
not  apply  to  it;  and  I  do  not  now  see,  either,  though 
at  the  time  it  confounded  me.  On  minor  points  he 
was,  beyond  any  author  I  have  known,  without  favorite 
phrases  or  pet  words.  He  utterly  despised  the  avoid 
ance  of  repetitions  out  of  fear  of  tautology.  If  a  word 
served  his  turn  better  than  a  substitute,  he  would  use 
it  as  many  times  in  a  page  as  he  chose. 


AT  that  time  I  had  become  editor  of  The  Atlantic 
Monthly,  and  I  had  allegiances  belonging  to  the  con 
duct  of  what  was  and  still  remains  the  most  scrupu 
lously  cultivated  of  our  periodicals.  When  Clemens 
began  to  write  for  it  he  carrie  willingly  under  its  rules, 
for  with  all  his  wilfulness  there  never  was  a  more 
biddable  man  in  things  you  could  show  him  a  reason 
for.  He  never  made  the  least  of  that  trouble  which 
so  abounds  for  the  hapless  editor  from  narrower- 
minded  contributors.  If  you  wanted  a  thing  changed, 
very  good,  he  changed  it ;  if  you  suggested  that  a  word 
or  a  sentence  or  a  paragraph  had  better  be  struck  out, 
very  good,  he  struck  it  out.  His  proof-sheets  carne 
back  each  a  veritable  "  mush  of  concession,"  as  Emer 
son  says.  ISTow  and  then  he  would  try  a  little  stronger 
language  than  The  Atlantic  had  stomach  for,  and  once 
when  I  sent  him  a  proof  I  made  him  observe  that  I  had 
left  out  the  profanity.  He  wrote  back :  "  Mrs.  Clemens 
opened  that  proof,  and  lit  into  the  room  with  danger  in 
her  eye.  What  profanity?  You  see,  when  I  read  the 
manuscript  to  her  I  skipped  that,"  It  was  part  of  his 
joke  to  pretend  a  violence  in  that  gentlest  creature 
which  the  more  amusingly  realized  the  situation  to  their 
friends. 

I  was  always  very  glad  of  him  and  proud  of  him 
as  a  contributor,  but  I  must  not  claim  the  whole  merit, 
22  323 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

or  the  first  merit  of  having  him  write  for  us.  It  was 
the  publisher,  the  late  II.  O.  Ho  lighten,  who  felt  the 
incongruity  of  his  absence  from  the  leading  periodical 
of  the  country,  and  was  always  urging  me  to  get  him 
to  write.  I  will  take  the  credit  of  being  eager  for 
him,  but  it  is  to  the  publisher's  credit  that  he  tried,  so 
far  as  the  modest  traditions  of  The  Atlantic  would 
permit,  to  meet  the  expectations  in  pay  which  the  colos 
sal  profits  of  Olemens's  books  might  naturally  have 
bred  in  him.  Whether  he  was  really  able  to  do  this  he 
never  knew  from  Clemens  himself,  but  probably  twenty 
dollars  a  page  did  not  surfeit  the  author  of  books  that 
"sold  right  along  just  like  the  Bible." 

We  had  several  short  contributions  from  Clemens 
first,  all  of  capital  quality,  and  then  we  had  the  series 
of  papers  which  went  mainly  to  the  making  of  his  great 
book,  Life  on  the  Mississippi.  Upon  the  whole  I  have 
the  notion  that  Clemens  thought  this  his  greatest  book, 
and  he  was  supported  in  his  opinion  by  that  of  the 
portier  in  his  hotel  at  Vienna,  arid  that  of  the  German 
Emperor,  who,  as  he  told  me  with  equal  respect  for  the 
preference  of  each,  united  in  thinking  it  his  best;  with 
such  far-sundered  social  poles  approaching  in  its  favor, 
he  apparently  found  himself  without  standing  for  op 
position.  At  any  rate,  the  papers  won  instant  appre 
ciation  from  his  editor  and  publisher,  and  from  the 
readers  of  their  periodical,  which  they  expected  to 
prosper  beyond  precedent  in  its  circulation.  But  those 
were  days  of  simpler  acceptance  of  the  popular  rights 
of  newspapers  than  these  are,  when  magazines  strictly 
guard  their  vested  interests  against  them.  The  New 
York  Times  and  the  St.  Louis  Democrat  profited  by 
the  advance  copies  of  the  magazine  sent  them  to  re 
print  the  papers  month  by  month.  Together  they  cov 
ered  nearly  the  whole  reading  territory  of  the  Union, 

324 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

and  the  terms  of  their  daily  publication  enabled  them 
to  anticipate  the  magazine  in  its  own  restricted  field. 
Its  subscription  list  was  not  enlarged  in  the  slightest 
measure,  and  The  Atlantic  Monthly  languished  on  the 
news-stands  as  undesired  as  ever. 


VI 

IT  was  among  my  later  visits  to  Hartford  that  we 
began  to  talk  up  the  notion  of  collaborating  a  play, 
but  we  did  not  arrive  at  any  clear  intention,  and  it 
was  a  telegram  out  of  the  clear  sky  that  one  day  sum 
moned  me  from  Boston  to  help  with  a  continuation  of 
Colonel  Setters.  I  had  been  a  witness  of  the  high  joy  of 
Clemens  in  the  prodigious  triumph  of  the  first  Colonel 
Sellers,  which  had  been  dramatized  from  the  novel 
of  The  Gilded  Age.  This  was  the  joint  work  of  Clem 
ens  and  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  and  the  story  had 
been  put  upon  the  stage  by  some  one  in  Utah,  whom 
Clemens  first  brought  to  book  in  the  courts  for  viola 
tion  of  his  copyright,  and  then  indemnified  for  such 
rights  as  his  adaptation  of  the  book  had  given  him. 
The  structure  of  the  play  as  John  T.  Raymond  gave  it 
was  substantially  the  work  of  this  unknown  dramatist. 
Clemens  never  pretended,  to  me  at  any  rate,  that  he 
had  the  lea,st  hand  in  it;  he  frankly  owned  that  he 
was  incapable  of  dramatization ;  yet  the  vital  part  was 
his,  for  the  characters  in  the  play  were  his  as  the  book 
embodied  them,  and  the  success  which  it  won  with  the 
public  was  justly  his.  This  he  shared  equally  with  the 
actor,  following  the  company  with  an  agent,  who 
counted  out  the  author's  share  of  the  gate  money,  and 
sent  him  a  note  of  the  amount  every  day  by  postal 
card.  The  postals  used  to  come  about  dinner-time,  and 
Clemens  would  read  them  aloud  to  us  in  wild  triumph. 

326 


jMY    MAKE    TWAIN 

One  hundred  and  fifty  dollars — two  hundred  dollars — 
three  hundred  dollars  were  the  gay  figures  which  they 
bore,  and  which  he  flaunted  in  the  air  before  lie  sat 
down  at  table,  or  rose  from  it  to  brandish,  and  then, 
flinging  his  napkin  into  his  chair,  walked  up  and  down 
to  exult  in. 

By-and-by  the  popularity  of  the  play  waned,  and  the 
time  came  when  he  sickened  of  the  whole  affair,  and 
withdrew  his  agent,  and  took  whatever  gain  from  it  the 
actor  apportioned  him.  He  was  apt  to  have  these  sud 
den  surceases,  following  upon  the  intensities  of  his 
earlier  interest;  though  he  seemed  always  to  have  the 
notion  of  making  something  more  of  Colonel  Sellers. 
But  when  I  arrived  in  Hartford  in  answer  to  his  sum 
mons,  I  found  him  with  no  definite  idea  of  what  he 
wanted  to  do  with  him.  I  represented  that  we  must 
have  some  sort  of  plan,  and  he  agreed  that  we  should 
both  jot  down  a  scenario  overnight  and  compare  our 
respective  schemes  the  next  morning.  As  the  author 
of  a  large  number  of  little  plays  which  have  been 
privately  presented  throughout  the  United  States  and 
in  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom,  without  ever  getting 
upon  the  public  stage  except  for  the  noble  ends  of 
charity,  and  then  promptly  getting  off  it,  I  felt  au 
thorized  to  make  him  observe  that  his  scheme  was  as 
nearly  nothing  as  chaos  could  be.  He  agreed  hilari 
ously  with  me,  and  was  willing  to  let  it  stand  in  proof 
of  his  entire  dramatic  inability.  At  the  same  time  he 
liked  my  plot  very  much,  which  ultimated  Sellers,  ac 
cording  to  Clemens's  intention,  as  a  man  crazed  by  his 
own  inventions  and  by  his  superstition  that  he  was  the 
rightful  heir  to  an  English  earldom.  The  exuberant 
nature  of  Sellers  and  the  vast  range  of  his  imagina 
tion  served  our  purpose  in  other  ways.  Clemens  made 
him  a  spiritualist,  whose  specialty  in  the  occult  was 

327 


LITEKAEY    FKIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

materialization;  he  became  on  impulse  an  ardent 
temperance  reformer,  and  he  headed  a  procession  of 
temperance  ladies  after  disinterestedly  testing  the  del 
eterious  effects  of  liquor  upon  himself  until  he  could 
not  walk  straight;  always  he  wore  a  marvellous  fire- 
extinguisher  strapped  on  his  back,  to  give  proof  in  any 
emergency  of  the  effectiveness  of  his  invention  in  that 
way. 

We  had  a  jubilant  fortnight  in  working  the  par 
ticulars  of  these  things  out.  It  was  not  possible  for 
Clemens  to  write  like  anybody  else,  but  I  could  very 
easily  write  like  Clemens,  and  we  took  the  play  scene 
and  scene  about,  quite  secure  of  coming  out  in  tem 
peramental  agreement.  The  characters  remained  for 
the  most  part  his,  and  I  varied  them  only  to  make  them 
more  like  his  than,  if  possible,  he  could.  Several  years 
after,  when  I  looked  over  a  copy  of  the  play,  I  could 
not  always  tell  my  work  from  his;  I  only  knew  that  I 
had  done  certain  scenes.  We  would  work  all  day  long 
at  our  several  tasks,  and  then  at  night,  before  dinner, 
read  them  over  to  each  other.  No  dramatists  ever  got 
greater  joy  out  of  their  creations,  and  when  I  reflect 
that  the  public  never  had  the  chance  of  sharing  our  joy 
I  pity  the  public  from  a  full  heart.  I  still  believe 
that  the  play  was  immensely  funny ;  I  still  believe  that 
if  it  could  once  have  got  behind  the  footlights  it  would 
have  continued  to  pack  the  house  before  them  for  an 
indefinite  succession  of  nights.  But  this  may  be  my 
fondness. 

At  any  rate,  it  was  not  to  be.  Raymond  had  identi 
fied  himself  with  Sellers  in  the  play-going  imagina 
tion,  and  whether  consciously  or  unconsciously  we  con 
stantly  worked  with  Eaymond  in  our  minds.  But  be 
fore  this  time  bitter  displeasures  had  risen  between 
Clemens  and  Raymond,  and  Clemens  was  determined 

328 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

that  Raymond  should  never  have  the  play.  He  first 
offered  it  to  several  other  actors,  who  eagerly  caught 
at  it,  only  to  give  it  back  with  the  despairing  renuncia 
tion,  "  That  is  a  Raymond  play."  We  tried  managers 
with  it,  but  their  only  question  was  whether  they  could 
get  Raymond  to  do  it.  In  the  mean  time  Raymond 
had  provided  himself  with  a  play  for  the  winter — a 
very  good  play,  by  Demarest  Lloyd ;  and  he  was  in  no 
hurry  for  ours.  Perhaps  he  did  not  really  care  for 
it;  perhaps  he  knew  when  he  heard  of  it  that  it  must 
come  to  him  in  the  end.  In  the  end  it  did,  from  my 
hand,  for  Clemens  would  not  meet  him.  I  found  him  in 
a  mood  of  sweet  reasonableness,  perhaps  the  more  soft 
ened  by  one  of  those  lunches  which  our  publisher,  the 
hospitable  James  R.  Osgood,  was  always  bringing  people 
together  over  in  Boston.  He  said  that  he  could  not  do 
the  play  that  winter,  but  he  was  sure  that  he  should  like 
it,  and  he  had  no  doubt  he  would  do  it  the  next  winter. 
So  I  gave  him  the  manuscript,  in  spite  of  Clemens's 
charges,  for  his  suspicions  and  rancors  were  such  that  he 
would  not  have  had  me  leave  it  for  a  moment  in  the 
actor's  hands.  But  it  seemed  a  conclusion  that  involved 
success  and  fortune  for  us.  In  due  time,  but  I  do  not 
remember  how  long  after,  Raymond  declared  himself 
delighted  with  the  piece ;  he  entered  into  a  satisfactory 
agreement  for  it,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the  next  season 
he  started  with  it  to  Buffalo,  where  he  was  to  give  a 
first  production.  At  Rochester  he  paused  long  enough 
to  return  it,  with  the  explanation  that  a  friend  had  noted 
to  him  the  fact  that  Colonel  Sellers  in  the  play  was  a 
lunatic,  and  insanity  was  so  serious  a  thing  that  it 
could  not  be  represented  on  the  stage  without  outraging 
the  sensibilities  of  the  audience ;  or  words  to  that  ef 
fect.  We  were  too  far  off  to  allege  Hamlet  to  the 
contrary,  or  King  Lear,  or  to  instance  the  delight  which 

329 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

generations  of  readers  throughout  the  world  had  taken 
in  the  mad  freaks  of  Don  Quixote. 

Whatever  were  the  real  reasons  of  Raymond  for  re 
jecting  the  play,  we  had  to  be  content  with  those  he 
gave,  and  to  set  ahout  getting  it  into  other  hands.  In 
this  effort  we  failed  even  more  signally  than  before, 
if  that  were  possible.  At  last  a  clever  and  charming 
elocutionist,  who  had  long  wished  to  get  himself  on  the 
stage,  heard  of  it  and  asked  to  see  it.  We  would  have 
shown  it  to  any  one  by  this  time,  and  we  very  willingly 
showed  it  to  him.  He  came  to  Hartford  and  did  some 
scenes  from  it  for  us.  I  must  say  he  did  them  very 
well,  quite  as  well  as  Raymond  could  have  done  them, 
in  whose  manner  he  did  them.  But  now,  late  toward 
spring,  the  question  was  where  he  could  get  an  en 
gagement  with  the  play,  and  we  ended  by  hiring  a 
theatre  in  !N"ew  York  for  a  week  of  trial  perform 
ances. 

Clemens  came  on  witli  me  to  Boston,  where  we  were 
going  to  make  some  changes  in  the  piece,  and  where  we 
made  them  to  our  satisfaction,  but  not  to  the  effect  of 
that  high  rapture  which  wo  had  in  the  first  draft.  Ho 
went  back  to  Hartford,  and  then  the  cold  fit  came  upon 
me,  and  "  in  visions  of  the  night,  in  slumberings  upon 
the  bed,"  ghastly  forms  of  failure  appalled  me,  and 
when  I  rose  in  the  morning  I  wrote  him :  "  Here  is  a 
play  which  every  manager  has  put  out-of-doors  and 
which  every  actor  known  to  us  has  refused,  and  now 
we  go  and  give  it  to  an  elocutioner.  We  are  fools." 
Whether  Clemens  agreed  with  me  or  not  in  my  con 
clusion,  he  agreed  with  me  in  my  premises,  and  we 
promptly  bought  our  play  off  the  stage  at  a  cost  of 
seven  hundred  dollars,  which  we  shared  between  us. 
But  Clemens  was  never  a  man  to  give  up.  I  relin 
quished  gratis  all  right  and  title  I  had  in  the  play, 

330 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

and  lie  paid  its  entire  expenses  for  a  week  of  one-night 
stands  in  the  country.  It  never  came  to  New  York; 
and  yet  I  think  now  that  if  it  had  come,  it  would  have 
succeeded.  So  hard  does  the  faith  of  the  unsuccessful 
dramatist  in  his  work  die! 


VII 


THERE  is  an  incident  of  this  time  so  characteristic 
of  both  men  that  I  will  yield  to  the  temptation  of  giv 
ing  it  here.  After  I  had  gone  to  Hartford  in  response 
to  Clemens's  telegram,  Matthew  Arnold  arrived  in  Bos 
ton,  and  one  of  my  family  called  on  his,  to  explain  why 
I  was  not  at  home  to  receive  his  introduction:  I  had 
gone  to  see  Mark  Twain.  "  Oh,  but  he  doesn't  like 
that  sort  of  thing,  does  he  ?"  "  He  likes  Mr.  Clemens 
very  much,"  my  representative  answered,  "  and  he 
thinks  him  one  of  the  greatest  men  he  ever  knew." 
I  was  still  Clemens's  guest  at  Hartford  when  Arnold 
came  there  to  lecture,  and  one  night  we  went  to  meet 
him  at  a  reception.  While  his  hand  laxly  held  mine 
in  greeting,  I  saw  his  eyes  fixed  intensely  on  the  other 
side  of  the  room.  "  Who — who  in  the  world  is  that  3" 
I  looked  and  said,  "  Oh,  that  is  Mark  Twain."  I  do 
not  remember  just  how  their  instant  encounter  was 
contrived  by  Arnold's  wish,  but  I  have  the  impression 
that  they  were  not  parted  for  long  during  the  evening, 
and  the  next  night  Arnold,  as  if  still  under  the  glam 
our  of  that  potent  presence,  was  at  Clemens's  house. 
I  cannot  say  how  they  got  on,  or  what  they  made  of 
each  other;  if  Clemens  ever  spoke  of  Arnold,  I  do  not 
recall  what  he  said,  but  Arnold  had  shown  a  sense  of 
him  from  which  the  incredulous  sniff  of  the  polite 
world,  now  so  universally  exploded,  had  already  per 
ished.  It  might  well  have  done  so  with  his  first  dra- 

332 


MY    MAKK    TWAIN 

matic  vision  of  that  prodigious  head.  Clemens  was 
then  hard  upon  fifty,  and  he  had  kept,  as  he  did  to 
the  end,  the  slender  figure  of  his  youth,  but  the  ashes 
of  the  burnt-out  years  were  beginning  to  gray  the  fires 
of  that  splendid  shock  of  red  hair  which  he  held  to  the 
height  of  a  stature  apparently  greater  than  it  was, 
and  tilted  from  side  to  side  in  his  undulating  walk, 
lie  glimmered  at  you  from  the  narrow  slits  of  fine  blue- 
greenish  eyes,  under  branching  brows,  which  with  age 
grew  more  and  more  like  a  sort  of  plumage,  and  he 
was  apt  to  smile  into  your  face  with  a  subtle  but  ami 
able  perception,  and  yet  with  a  sort  of  remote  absence ; 
you  were  all  there  for  him,  but  he  was  not  all  there 
for  you. 


VIII 

I  SHALL  not  try  to  give  chronological  order  to  my 
recollections  of  him,  but  since  I  am  just  now  with  him 
in  Hartford  I  will  speak  of  him  in  association  with 
the  place.  Once  when  I  came  on  from  Cambridge  he 
followed  me  to  my  room  to  see  that  the  water  was  not 
frozen  in  my  bath,  or  something  of  the  kind,  for  it  was 
very  cold  weather,  and  then  hospitably  lingered.  Not 
to  lose  time  in  banalities  I  began  at  once  from  the 
thread  of  thought  in  my  mind.  "  I  wonder  why  we 
hate  the  past  so,"  and  he  responded  from  the  depths 
of  his  own  consciousness,  "  It's  so  damned  humiliat 
ing,"  which  is  what  any  man  would  say  of  his  past 
if  he  were  honest ;  but  honest  men  are  few  when  it 
comes  to  themselves.  Clemens  was  one  of  the  few,  and 
the  first  of  them  among  all  the  people  I  have  known. 
I  have  known,  I  suppose,  men  as  truthful,  but  not  so 
promptly,  so  absolutely,  so  positively,  so  almost  ag 
gressively  truthful.  He  could  lie,  of  course,  and  did 
to  save  others  from  grief  or  harm ;  he  was  not  stupidly 
truthful ;  but  his  first  impulse  was  to  say  out  the  thing 
and  everything  that  was  in  him.  To  those  who  can 
understand  it  will  not  be  contradictory  of  his  sense  of 
humiliation  from  the  past,  that  he  was  not  ashamed  for 
anything  he  ever  did  to  the  point  of  wishing  to  hide  it. 
He  could  be,  and  he  was,  bitterly  sorry  for  his  errors, 
which  he  had  enough  of  in  his  life,  but  he  was  not 
ashamed  in  that  mean  way.  What  he  had  done  he 

334 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

owned  to,  good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  and  if  it  was  bad 
he  was  rather  amused  than  troubled  as  to  the  effect  in 
your  mind.  He  would  not  obtrude  the  fact  upon  you, 
but  if  it  were  in  the  way  of  personal  history  he  would 
not  dream  of  withholding  it,  far  less  of  hiding  it. 

He  was  the  readiest  of  men  to  allow  an  error  if  he 
were  found  in  it.  In  one  of  our  walks  about  Hartford, 
when  he  was  in  the  first  fine  flush  of  his  agnosticism, 
he  declared  that  Christianity  had  done  nothing  to  im 
prove  morals  and  conditions,  and  that  the  world  under 
the  highest  pagan  civilization  was  as  well  off  as  it  was 
under  the  highest  Christian  influences.  I  happened  to 
be  fresh  from  the  reading  of  Charles  Loring  Brace's 
Gesta  Ckristi;  or,  History  of  Humane  Progress,  and  I 
could  offer  him  abundant  proofs  that  he  was  wrong. 
He  did  not  like  that  evidently,  but  he  instantly  gave 
way,  saying  he  had  not  known  those  things.  Later  ho 
was  more  tolerant  in  his  denials  of  Christianity,  but 
just  then  he  was  feeling  his  freedom  from  it,  and  re 
joicing  in  having  broken  what  he  felt  to  have  been  the 
shackles  of  belief  worn  so  long.  He  greatly  admired 
Robert  Ingersoll,  whom  he  called  an  angelic  orator, 
and  regarded  as  an  evangel  of  a  new  gospel — the  gospel 
of  free  thought.  He  took  the  warmest  interest  in  the 
newspaper  controversy  raging  at  the  time  as  to  the  ex 
istence  of  a  hell ;  when  the  noes  carried  the  day,  I  sup 
pose  that  no  enemy  of  perdition  was  more  pleased.  He 
still  loved  his  old  friend  and  pastor,  Mr.  Twichell,  but 
he  no  longer  went  to  hear  him  preach  his  sane  and 
beautiful  sermons,  and  was,  I  think,  thereby  the  greater 
loser.  Long  before  that  I  had  asked  him  if  he  went 
regularly  to  church,  and  he  groaned  out :  "  Oh  yes,  I 
go.  It  'most  kills  me,  but  I  go,"  and  I  did  not  need 
his  telling  me  to  understand  that  he  went  because  his 
wife  wished  it.  He  did  tell  me,  after  they  both  ceased 

335 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

to  go,  that  it  had  finally  come  to  her  saying,  "  Well, 
if  you  are  to  be  lost,  I  want  to  be  lost  with  you."  He 
could  accept  that  willingness  for  supreme  sacrifice  and 
exult  in  it  because  of  the  supreme  truth  as  he  saw  it. 
After  they  had  both  ceased  to  be  formal  Christians, 
she  was  still  grieved  by  his  denial  of  immortality,  so 
grieved  that  he  resolved  upon  one  of  those  heroic  lies, 
which  for  love's  sake  he  held  above  even  the  truth, 
and  he  went  to  her,  saying  that  he  had  been  thinking 
the  whole  matter  over,  and  now  he  was  convinced  that 
the  soul  did  live  after  death.  It  was  too  late.  Her 
keen  vision  pierced  through  his  ruse,  as  it  did  when  he 
brought  the  doctor  who  had  diagnosticated  her  case  as 
organic  disease  of  the  heart,  and,  after  making  him  go 
over  the  facts  of  it  again  with  her,  made  him  declare  it 
merely  functional. 

To  make  an  end  of  these  records  as  to  Clemens's  be 
liefs,  so  far  as  I  knew  them,  I  should  say  that  he  never 
went  back  to  anything  like  faith  in  the  Christian  the 
ology,  or  in  the  notion  of  life  after  death,  or  in  a  con 
scious  divinity.  It  is  best  to  be  honest  in  this  matter; 
he  would  have  hated  anything  else,  and  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  truth  in  it  can  hurt  any  one.  At  one  period 
he  argued  that  there  must  have  been  a  cause,  a  con 
scious  source  of  things;  that  the  universe  could  not 
have  come  by  chance.  I  have  heard  also  that  in  his 
last  hours  or  moments  he  said,  or  his  dearest  ones  hoped 
he  had  said,  something  about  meeting  again.  But  the 
expression,  of  which  they  could  not  be  certain,  was  of 
the  vaguest,  and  it  was  perhaps  addressed  to  their 
tenderness  out  of  his  tenderness.  All  his  expressions 
to  me  were  of  a  courageous  renunciation  of  any  hope 
of  living  again,  or  elsewhere  seeing  those  he  had  lost. 
He  suffered  terribly  in  their  loss,  and  he  was  not  fool 
enough  to  try  ignoring  his  grief.  He  knew  that  for 

336 


MY    MARK    TWAIN" 

this  there  were  but  two  medicines;  that  it  would  wear 
itself  out  with  the  years,  and  that  meanwhile  there  was 
nothing  for  it  but  those  respites  in  which  the  mourner 
forgets  himself  in  slumber.  I  remember  that  in  a  black 
hour  of  my  own  when  I  was  called  down  to  see  him, 
as  he  thought  from  sleep,  he  said  with  an  infinite,  an 
exquisite  compassion,  "  Oh,  did  I  wake  you,  did  I  wake 
you?"  Nothing  more,  but  the  look,  the  voice,  were 
everything ;  and  while  I  live  they  cannot  pass  from  my 
sense. 


IX 

HE  was  the  most  caressing  of  men  in  his  pity,  but 
he  had  the  fine  instinct,  which  would  have  pleased 
Lowell,  of  never  putting  his  hands  on  you — fine,  deli 
cate  hands,  with  taper  fingers,  and  pink  nails,  like  a 
girl's,  and  sensitively  quivering  in  moments  of  emo 
tion;  he  did  not  paw  you  with  them  to  show  his  af 
fection,  as  so  many  of  us  Americans  are  apt  to  do. 
Among  the  half-dozen,  or  half-hundred,  personalities 
that  each  of  us  becomes,  I  should  say  that  Clernens's 
central  and  final  personality  was  something  exquisite. 
His  casual  acquaintance  might  know  him,  perhaps, 
from  his  fierce  intensity,  his  wild  pleasure  in  shocking 
people  with  his  ribaldries  and  profanities,  or  from  the 
mere  need  of  loosing  his  rebellious  spirit  in  that  way, 
as  anything  but  exquisite,  and  yet  that  was  what  in  the 
last  analysis  he  was.  They  might  come  away  loathing 
or  hating  him,  but  one  could  not  know  him  well  with 
out  realizing  him  the  most  serious,  the  most  humane, 
the  most  conscientious  of  men.  He  was  Southwestern, 
and  born  amid  the  oppression  of  a  race  that  had  no 
rights  as  against  ours,  but  I  never  saw  a  man  more 
regardful  of  negroes.  He  had  a  yellow  butler  when  I 
first  began  to  know  him,  because  he  said  he  could  not 
bear  to  order  a  white  man  about,  but  the  terms  of  his 
ordering  George  were  those  of  the  softest  entreaty  which 
command  ever  wore.  He  loved  to  rely  upon  George, 
who  was  such  a  broken  reed  in  some  things,  though 

338 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

so  stanch  in  others,  and  the  fervent  Republican  in  poli 
tics  that  Clemens  then  liked  him  to  be.  He  could  in 
terpret  Clemens's  meaning;  to  the  public  without  convey 
ing  his  mood,  and  could  render  his  roughest  answer 
smooth  to  the  person  denied  his  presence.  His  general 
instructions  were  that  this  presence  was  to  be  denied  all 
but  personal  friends,  but  the  soft  heart  of  George  was 
sometimes  touched  by  importunity,  and  once  he  came 
up  into  the  billiard-room  saying  that  Mr.  Smith  wished 
to  see  Clemens.  Upon  inquiry,  Mr.  Smith  developed 
no  ties  of  friendship,  and  Clemens  said,  "  You  go  and 
tell  Mr.  Smith  that  I  wouldn't  come  down  to  see  the 
Twelve  Apostles."  George  turned  from  the  threshold 
where  he  had  kept  himself,  and  framed  a  paraphrase 
of  this  message  which  apparently  sent  Mr.  Smith  away 
content  with  himself  and  all  the  rest  of  the  world. 

The  part  of  him  that  was  Western  in  his  South 
western  origin  Clemens  kept  to  the  end,  but  he  was 
the  most  desouthcrnized  Southerner  I  ever  knew.  Jfo 
man  more  perfectly  sensed  and  more  entirely  abhorred 
slavery,  and  no  one  has  ever  poured  such  scorn  upon 
the  second-hand,  Walter-Scotticized,  pseudo-chivalry  of 
the  Southern  ideal.  He  held  himself  responsible  for 
the  wrong  which  the  white  race  had  done  the  black  race 
in  slavery,  and  he  explained,  in  paying  the  way  of  a 
negro  student  through  Yale,  that  he  was  doing  it  as  his 
part  of  the  reparation  due  from  every  white  to  every 
black  man.  He  said  he  had  never  seen  this  student, 
nor  ever  wished  to  see  him  or  know  his  name;  it  was 
quite  enough  that  he  was  a  negro.  About  that  time  a 
colored  cadet  w^as  expelled  from  West  Point  for  some 
point  of  conduct  "  unbecoming  an  officer  and  gentle 
man,"  and  there  was  the  usual  shabby  philosophy  in  a' 
portion  of  the  press  to  the  effect  that  a  negro  could 
never  feel  the  claim  of  honor.  The  man  was  fifteen' 

23  339 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

parts  white,  but,  "  Oh  yes,"  Clemens  said,  with  bitter 
irony,  "  it  was  that  one  part  black  that  undid  him." 
It  made  him  a  "  nigger  "  and  incapable  of  being  a 
gentleman.  It  was  to  blame  for  the  whole  thing.  The 
fifteen  parts  white  were  guiltless. 

Clemens  was  entirely  satisfied  with  the  result  of  the 
Civil  War,  and  he  was  eager  to  have  its  facts  and  mean 
ings  brought  out  at  once  in  history.  He  ridiculed  tho 
notion,  held  by  many,  that  "  it  was  not  yet  time  "  to  phi 
losophize  the  events  of  the  great  struggle ;  that  we  must 
"  wait  till  its  passions  had  cooled,"  and  "  the  clouds  of 
strife  had  cleared  away."  He  maintained  that  the  time 
would  never  come  when  we  should  see  its  motives  and 
men  and  deeds  more  clearly,  and  that  now,  now,  was 
the  hour  to  ascertain  them  in  lasting  verity.  Pictu 
resquely  and  dramatically  he  portrayed  the  imbecility 
of  deferring  the  inquiry  at  any  point  to  the  distance  of 
future  years  when  inevitably  the  facts  would  begin  to 
put  on  fable. 

He  had  powers  of  sarcasm  and  a  relentless  rancor 
in  his  contempt  which  those  who  knew  him  best  appre 
ciated  most.  The  late  Noah  Brooks,  who  had  been  in 
California  at  the  beginning  of  Clemeus's  career,  and 
'Had  witnessed  the  effect  of  his  ridicule  before  he  had 
learned  to  temper  it,  once  said  to  me  that  he  would 
rather  have  any  one  else  in  the  world  down  on  him  than 
Mark  Twain.  But  as  Clemens  grew  older  he  grew 
more  merciful,  not  to  the  wrong,  but  to  the  men  who 
were  in  it.  The  wrong  was  often  the  source  of  his 
wildest  drolling.  He  considered  it  in  such  hopeless 
ness  of  ever  doing  it  justice  that  his  despair  broke  in 
laughter. 


I  GO  back  to  that  house  in  Hartford,  where  I  was  so 
often  a  happy  guest,  with  tenderness  for  each  of  its 
endearing  aspects.  Over  the  chimney  in  the  library 
which  had  been  cured  of  smoking  by  so  much  art  and 
science,  Clemens  had  written  in  perennial  brass  the 
words  of  Emerson,  "  The  ornament  of  a  house  is  the 
friends  who  frequent  it,"  and  he  gave  his  guests  a  wel 
come  of  the  simplest  and  sweetest  cordiality:  but  I 
must  not  go  aside  to  them  from  my  recollections  of 
him,  which  will  be  of  sufficient  garrulity,  if  I  give  them 
as  fully  as  I  wish.  The  windows  of  the  library  looked 
northward  from  the  hillside  above  which  the  house 
stood,  and  over  the  little  valley  with  the  stream  in  it, 
and  they  showed  the  leaves  of  the  trees  that  almost 
brushed  them  as  in  a  Claude  Lorraine  glass.  To  the 
eastward  the  dining-room  opened  amply,  and  to  the 
south  there  was  a  wide  hall,  where  the  voices  of  friends 
made  themselves  heard  as  they  entered  without  cere 
mony  and  answered  his  joyous  hail.  At  the  west  was 
a  little  semi-circular  conservatory  of  a  pattern  invented 
by  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  and  adopted  in  most  of 
the  houses  of  her  kindly  neighborhood.  The  plants 
were  set  in  the  ground,  and  the  flowering  vines  climbed 
up  the  sides  and  overhung  the  roof  above  the  silent 
spray  of  a  fountain  companied  by  callas  and  other 
water-loving  lilies.  There,  while  we  breakfasted,  Pat 
rick  came  in  from  the  barn  and  sprinkled  the  pretty 

341 


LITEKARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

bower,  which  poured  out  its  responsive  perfume  in  the 
delicate  accents  of  its  varied  blossoms.  Breakfast  was 
Clernens's  best  meal,  and  he  sat  longer  at  his  steak  and 
coffee  than  at  the  courses  of  his  dinner ;  luncheon  was 
nothing  to  him,  unless,  as  might  happen,  he  made  it 
his  dinner,  and  reserved  the  later  repast  as  the  oc 
casion  of  walking  up  and  down  the  room,  and  dis 
coursing  at  large  on  anything  that  came  into  his  head. 
Like  most  good  talkers,  he  liked  other  people  to  have 
their  say;  he  did  not  talk  them  down;  he  stopped  in 
stantly  at  another's  remark  and  gladly  or  politely 
heard  him  through;  he  even  made  believe  to  find  sug 
gestion  or  inspiration  in  what  was  said.  His  children 
came  to  the  table,  as  I  have  told,  and  after  dinner  he 
was  apt  to  join  his  fine  tenor  to  their  trebles  in  singing. 

Fully  half  our  meetings  were  at  my  house  in  Cam 
bridge,  where  lie  made  himself  as  much  at  home  as  in 
Hartford.  He  would  come  ostensibly  to  stay  at  the 
Parker  House,  in  Boston,  and  take  a  room,  where  he 
would  light  the  gas  and  leave  it  burning,  after  dress 
ing,  while  he  drove  out  to  Cambridge  and  stayed  two 
or  three  days  with  us.  Once,  I  suppose  it  was  after  a 
lecture,  he  came  in  evening  dress  and  passed  twenty- 
four  hours  with  us  in  that  guise,  wearing  an  overcoat 
to  hide  it  when  we  went  for  a  walk.  Sometimes  he 
wore  the  slippers  which  he  preferred  to  shoes  at  home, 
and  if  it  was  muddy,  as  it  was  wont  to  be  in  Cambridge, 
he  would  put  a  pair  of  rubbers  over  them  for  our  ram 
bles.  He  liked  the  lawlessness  and  our  delight  in  al 
lowing  it,  and  he  rejoiced  in  the  confession  of  his 
hostess,  after  we  had  once  almost  worn  ourselves  out 
in  our  pleasure  with  the  intense  talk,  with  the  stories 
and  the  laughing,  that  his  coming  almost  killed  her, 
but  it.  was  worth  it. 

In  those  days  he  was  troubled  with  sleeplessness,  or, 
342 


MY    MAKE    TWAIN 

rather,  with  reluctant  sleepiness,  and  he  had  various 
specifics  for  promoting  it.  At  first  it  had  been  cham 
pagne  just  before  going  to  bed,  and  we  provided  that, 
but  later  he  appeared  from  Boston  with  four  bottles  of 
lager-beer  under  his  arms ;  lager-beer,  he  said  now, 
was  the  only  thing  to  make  you  go  to  sleep,  and  we 
provided  that.  Still  later,  on  a  visit  I  paid  him  at 
Hartford,  I  learned  that  hot  Scotch  was  the  only  sop 
orific  worth  considering,  and  Scotch  whiskey  duly 
found  its  place  on  our  sideboard.  One  day,  very  long 
afterward,  I  asked  him  if  he  were  still  taking  hot 
Scotch  to  make  him  sleep.  He  said  he  was  not  taking 
anything.  For  a  while  he  had  found  going  to  bed  on 
the  bath-room  floor  a  soporific ;  then  one  night  he  went 
to  rest  in  his  own  bed  at  tori  o'clock,  and  had  gone 
promptly  to  sleep  without  anything.  He  had  done  the 
like  with  the  like  effect  ever  since.  Of  course,  it 
amused  him ;  there  were  few  experiences  of  life,  grave 
or  gay,  which  did  not  amuse  him,  even  when  they 
wronged  him. 

He  came  on  to  Cambridge  in  April,  1875,  to  go  witli 
me  to  the  centennial  ceremonies  at  Concord  in  celebra 
tion  of  the  battle  of  the  Minute  Men  with  the  British 
troops  a  hundred  years  before.  We  both  had  special 
invitations,  including  passage  from  Boston ;  but  I  said, 
Why  bother  to  go  into  Boston  when  we  could  just  as 
well  take  the  train  for  Concord  at  the  Cambridge  sta 
tion  ?  He  equally  decided  that  it  would  be  absurd ; 
so  we  breakfasted  deliberately,  and  then  walked  to  the 
station,  reasoning  of  many  things  as  usual.  When  the 
train  stopped,  we  found  it  packed  inside  and  out.  Peo 
ple  stood  dense  on  the  platforms  of  the  cars;  to  our 
startled  eyes  they  seemed  to  project  from  the  windows, 
and  unless  memory  betrays  me  they  lay  strewn  upon 
the  roofs  like  brakemen  slain  at  the  post  of  duty. 

343 


LITEEAEY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

WhetKer  this  was  really  so  or  not,  it  is  certain  that 
the  train  presented  an  impenetrable  front  even  to  our 
imagination,  and  we  left  it  to  go  its  way  without  the 
slightest  effort  to  board.  We  remounted  the  fame-worn 
steps  of  Porter's  Station,  and  began  exploring  North 
Cambridge  for  some  means  of  transportation  overland 
to  Concord,  for  we  were  that  far  on  the  road  by  which 
the  British  went  and  came  on  the  day  of  the  battle. 
The  liverymen  whom  we  appealed  to  received  us,  some 
with  compassion,  some  with  derision,  but  in  either 
mood  convinced  us  that  we  could  not  have  hired  a  cat 
to  attempt  our  conveyance,  much  less  a  horse,  or  vehicle 
of  any  description.  It  was  a  raw,  windy  day,  very 
unlike  the  exceptionally  hot  April  day  when  the  routed 
redcoats,  pursued  by  the  Colonials,  fled  panting  back  to 
Boston,  with  u  their  tongues  hanging  out  like  dogs,'* 
but  we  could  not  take  due  comfort  in  the  vision  of 
their  discomfiture ;  we  could  almost  envy  them,  for  they 
had  at  least  got  to  Concord.  A  swift  procession  of 
coaches,  carriages,  and  buggies,  all  going  to  Concord, 
passed  us,  inert  and  helpless,  on  the  sidewalk  in  the 
peculiarly  cold  mud  of  l^orth  Cambridge.  We  began 
to  wonder  if  we  might  not  stop  one  of  them  and  bribe 
it  to  take  us,  but  we  had  not  the  courage  to  try,  and 
Clemens  seized  the  opportunity  to  begin  suffering  with 
an  acute  indigestion,  which  gave  his  humor  a  very  dis 
mal  cast,  I  felt  keenly  the  shame  of  defeat,  and  the 
guilt  of  responsibility  for  our  failure,  and  when  a  gay 
party  of  students  came  toward  us  on  the  top  of  a  tally- 
ho,  luxuriously  empty  inside,  we  felt  that  our  chance 
had  come,  and  our  last  chance.  He  said  that  if  I 
would  stop  them  and  tell  them  who  I  was  they  would 
gladly,  perhaps  proudly,  give  us  passage;  I  contended 
that  if  with  his  far  vaster  renown  he  would  approach 
them,  our  success  would  be  assured.  While  we  stood, 

344 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

lost  in  this  "  contest  of  civilities,"  the  coach  passed  us, 
with  gay  notes  blown  from  the  horns  of  the  students, 
and  then  Clemens  started  in  pursuit,  encouraged  with 
shouts  from  the  merry  party  who  could  not  imagine 
who  was  trying  to  run  them  down,  to  a  rivalry  in  speed. 
The  unequal  match  could  end  only  in  one  way,  and  I 
am  glad  I  cannot  recall  what  he  said  wrhen  he  came 
back  to  me.  Since  then  I  have  often  wondered  at  the 
grief  which  would  have  wrung  those  blithe  young 
hearts  if  they  could  have  known  that  they  might  have 
had  the  company  of  Mark  Twain  to  Concord  that  day 
and  did  not. 

We  living  about,  unavailingly,  in  the  bitter  wind  a 
while  longer,  and  then  slowly,  very  slowly,  made  our 
way  home.  We  wished  to  pass  as  much  time  as  pos 
sible,  in  order  to  give  probability  to  the  deceit  we  in 
tended  to  practise,  for  we  could  not  bear  to  own  our 
selves  baffled  in  our  boasted  wisdom  of  taking  the  train 
at  Porter's  Station,  and  had  agreed  to  say  that  we  had 
been  to  Concord  and  got  back.  Even  after  coming 
home  to  my  house,  we  felt  that  our  statement  would 
be  wanting  in  verisimilitude  without  further  delay, 
and  we  crept  quietly  into  my  library,  and  made  up 
a  roaring  fire  on  the  hearth,  and  thawed  ourselves  out 
in  the  heat  of  it  before  we  regained  our  courage  for 
the  undertaking.  With  all  these  precautions  we  failed, 
for  when  our  statement  was  imparted  to  the  proposed 
victim  she  instantly  pronounced  it  unreliable,  and  we 
\vere  left  with  it  on  our  hands  intact.  I  think  the 
humor  of  this  situation  was  finally  a  greater  pleasure 
to  Clemens  than  an  actual  visit  to  Concord  would  have 
been;  only  a  few  wreeks  before  his  death  he  laughed 
our  defeat  over  with  one  of  my  family  in  Bermuda,  and 
exulted  in  our  prompt  detection. 


XI 


FKOM  our  joint  experience  in  failing  I  argue  that 
Clernens's  affection  for  me  must  have  been  great  to  en 
able  him  to  condone  in  me  the  final  defection  which 
was  apt  to  be  the  end  of  our  enterprises.  I  have  fancied 
that  I  presented  to  him  a  surface  of  such  entire  trust 
worthiness  that  he  could  not  imagine  the  depths  of  un 
reliability  beneath  it;  and  that  never  realizing  it,  he 
always  broke  through  with  fresh  surprise  but  unim 
paired  faith.  lie  liked,  beyond  all  things,  to  push  an 
affair  to  the  bitter  end,  and  the  end  was  never  too  bitter 
unless  it  brought  grief  or  harm  to  another.  Once  in 
a  telegraph  office  at  a  railway  station  he  was  treated 
with  such  insolent  neglect  by  the  young  lady  in  charge, 
who  was  preoccupied  in  a  flirtation  with  a  "  gentleman 
friend,"  that  emulous  of  the  public  spirit  which  he 
admired  in  the  English,  he  told  her  he  should  report 
her  to  her  superiors,  and  (probably  to  her  astonish 
ment)  he  did  so.  lie  went  back  to  Hartford,  and  in 
due  time  the  poor  girl  came  to  me  in  terror  and  in 
tears ;  for  I  had  abetted  Clemens  in  his  action,  and  had 
joined  my  name  to  his  in  his  appeal  to  the  authorities. 
She  was  threatened  with  dismissal  unless  she  made 
full  apology  to  him  and  brought  back  assurance  of  its 
acceptance.  I  felt  able  to  give  this,  and,  of  course,  he 
eagerly  approved ;  I  think  he  telegraphed  his  approval. 
Another  time,  some  years  afterward,  we  sat  down  to 
gether  in  places  near  the  end  of  a  car,  and  a  brakeman 

346 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

came  in  looking  for  his  official  note-book.  Clemens 
found  that  he  had  sat  down  upon  it,  and  handed  it  to 
him;  the  man  scolded  him  very  abusively,  and  came 
back  again  and  again,  still  scolding  him  for  having  no 
more  sense  than  to  sit  down  on  a  note-book.  The  patience 
of  Clemens  in  bearing  it  was  so  angelic  that  I  saw  fit 
to  comment,  "  I  suppose  you  will  report  this  fellow." 
"  Yes,"  he  answered,  slowly  and  sadly.  "  That's  what 
I  should  have  done  once.  But  now  I  remember  that  he 
gets  twenty  dollars  a  month." 

Nothing  could  have  been  wiser,  nothing  tenderer, 
and  his  humanity  was  not  for  humanity  alone.  He 
abhorred  the  dull  and  savage  joy  of  the  sportsman  in 
a  lucky  shot,  an  unerring  aim,  and  once  when  I  met 
him  in  the  country  he  had  just  been  sickened  by  the 
success  of  a  gunner  in  bringing  down  a  blackbird,  and 
he  described  the  poor,  stricken,  glossy  thing,  how  it  lay 
throbbing  its  life  out  on  the  grass,  with  such  pity  as 
he  might  have  given  a  wounded  child.  I  find  this  a  fit 
place  to  say  that  his  mind  and  soul  were  with  those 
who  do  the  hard  work  of  the  world,  in  fear  of  those 
who  give  them  a  chance  for  their  livelihoods  and  un 
derpay  them  all  they  can.  He  never  went  so  far  in 
socialism  as  I  have  gone,  if  he  went  that  way  at  all, 
but  he  was  fascinated  with  Looking  Backward  and  had 
Bellamy  to  visit  him;  and  from  the  first  he  had  a 
luminous  vision  of  organized  labor  as  the  only  pres 
ent  help  for  working  -  men.  He  would  show  that 
side  with  such  clearness  and  such  force  that  you 
could  not  say  anything  in  hopeful  contradiction ;  he 
saw  with  that  relentless  insight  of  his  that  in  the 
Unions  was  the  working-man's  only  present  hope  of 
standing  up  like  a  man  against  money  and  the  power 
of  it.  There  was  a  time  when  I  was  afraid  that  his 
eyes  were  a  little  holden  from  the  truth;  but  in  the 

347 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

very  last  talk  I  heard  from  him  I  found  that  I  was 
wrong,  and  that  this  groat  humorist  was  as  great  a 
humanist  as  ever.  I  wish  that  all  the  work-folk  could 
know  this,  and  could  know  him  their  friend  in  life  as 
lie  was  in  literature ;  as  he  was  in  such  a  glorious  gospel 
of  equality  as  the  Connecticut  Yankee  in  King  Arthur's 
Court. 


XII 

WHETHER  I  will  or  no  I  must  let  things  come  into 
my  story  thought-wise,  as  he  would  have  let  them,  for 
I  cannot  remember  them  in  their  order.  One  night, 
while  we  were  giving  a  party,  he  suddenly  stormed  in 
with  a  friend  of  his  and  mine,  Mr.  Twichell,  and  im 
mediately  began  to  eat  and  drink  of  our  supper,  for 
they  had  come  straight  to  our  house  from  walking  to 
Boston,  or  so  great  a  part  of  the  way  as  to  be  ahungered 
and  athirst.  I  can  see  him  now  as  he  stood  up  in  the 
midst  of  our  friends,  with  his  head  thrown  back,  and 
in  his  hand  a  dish  of  those  escalloped  oysters  without 
which  no  party  in  Cambridge  was  really  a  party,  ex 
ulting  in  the  tale  of  his  adventure,  which  had  abounded 
in  the  most  original  characters  and  amusing  incidents 
at  every  mile  of  their  progress.  They  had  broken  their 
journey  with  a  night's  rest,  and  they  had  helped  them 
selves  lavishly  out  by  rail  in  the  last  half;  but  still  it 
had  been  a  mighty  walk  to  do  in  two  days.  Clemens 
was  a  great  walker  in  those  years,  and  was  always  tell 
ing  of  his  tramps  with  Air.  Twichell  to  Talcott's  Tower, 
ten  miles  out  of  Hartford.  As  he  walked  of  course 
he  talked,  and  of  course  he  smoked.  Whenever  he  had 
been  a  few  days  with  us,  the  whole  house  had  to  be  aired, 
for  he  smoked  all  over  it  from  breakfast  to  bedtime. 
He  always  went  to  bed  with  a  cigar  in  his  mouth,  and 
sometimes,  mindful  of  my  fire  insurance,  I  went  up 
and  took  it  away,  still  burning,  after  he  had  fallen 

349 


LITERAET    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

asleep.  I  do  not  know  how  much  a  man  may  smoke 
and  live,  but  apparently  he  smoked  as  much  as  a  man 
could,  for  he  smoked  incessantly. 

He  did  not  care  much  to  meet  people,  as  I  fancied, 
and  we  were  greedy  of  him  for  ourselves;  he  was 
precious  to  us;  and  I  would  not  have  exposed  him  to 
the  critical  edge  of  that  Cambridge  acquaintance  which 
might  not  have  appreciated  him  at,  say,  his  transat 
lantic  value.  In  America  his  popularity  was  as  instant 
as  it  was  vast.  But  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  for 
a  much  longer  time  here  than  in  England  polite  learn 
ing  hesitated  his  praise.  In  England  rank,  fashion, 
and  culture  rejoiced  in  him.  Lord  mayors,  lord 
chief  justices,  and  magnates  of  many  kinds  were  his 
hosts;  he  was  desired  in  country  houses,  and  his  bold 
genius  captivated  the  favor  of  periodicals  which  spurn 
ed  the  rest  of  our  nation.  But  in  his  own  country 
it  was  different.  In  proportion  as  people  thought 
themselves  refined  they  questioned  that  quality  which 
all  recognize  in  him  now,  but  which  was  then  the  in 
spired  knowledge  of  the  simple-hearted  multitude.  I 
went  with  him  to  see  Longfellow,  but  I  do  not  think 
Longfellow  made  much  of  him,  and  Lowell  made  less. 
He  stopped  as  if  with  the  long  Semitic  curve  of  Clem- 
ens's  nose,  which  in  the  indulgence  of  his  passion  for 
finding  every  one  more  or  less  a  Jew  he  pronounced 
unmistakably  racial.  It  was  two  of  my  most  fastidious 
Cambridge  friends  who  accepted  him  with  the  Eng 
lish,  the  European  entirety  —  namely,  Charles  Eliot 
Norton  and  Professor  Erancis  J.  Child.  Norton  was 
then  newly  back  from  a  long  sojourn  abroad,  and  his 
judgments  were  delocalized.  He  met  Clemens  as  if 
they  had  both  been  in  England,  and  rejoiced  in  his 
bold  freedom  from  environment,  and  in  the  rich  variety 
and  boundless  reach  of  his  talk.  Child  was  of  a  per- 

350 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

sonal  liberty  as  great  in  its  fastidious  way  as  that  of 
Clemens  himself,  and  though  lie  knew  him  only  at 
second  hand,  he  exulted  in  the  most  audacious  instance 
of  his  grotesquery,  as  I  shall  have  to  tell  by-and-by, 
almost  solely.  I  cannot  say  just  why  Clemens  seemed 
not  to  hit  the  favor  of  our  community  of  scribes  and 
scholars,  as  Bret  ITarte  had  done,  when  he  came  on 
from  California,  and  swept  them  before  him,  disrupt 
ing  their  dinners  and  delaying  their  lunches  with  im 
punity;  but  it  is  certain  he  did  not,  and  I  had  better 
say  so. 

I  am  surprised  to  find  from  the  bibliographical  au 
thorities  that  it  was  so  late  as  1875  when  he  came  with 
the  manuscript  of  Tom  Sawyer,  and  asked  me  to  read 
it,  as  a  friend  and  critic,  and  not  as  an  editor.  I  have 
an  impression  that  this  was  at  Mrs.  Clemens's  instance 
in  his  own  uncertainty  about  printing  it.  She  trusted 
me,  I  can  say  with  a  satisfaction  few  things  now  give 
me,  to  be  her  husband's  true  and  cordial  adviser,  and 
I  was  so.  I  believe  I  never  failed  him  in  this  part, 
though  in  so  many  of  our  enterprises  and  projects  I 
was  false  as  water  through  my  temperamental  love  of 
backing  out  of  any  undertaking.  I  believe  this  never 
ceased  to  astonish  him,  and  it  has  always  astonished 
me;  it  appears  to  me  quite  out  of  character;  though 
it  is  certain  that  an  undertaking,  when  I  have  en 
tered  upon  it,  holds  me  rather  than  I  it.  But  how- 
.ever  this  immaterial  matter  may  be,  I  am  glad 
to  remember  that  I  thoroughly  liked  Tom  Sawyer, 
and  said  so  with  every  possible  amplification.  Very 
likely,  I  also  made  my  suggestions  for  its  improvement ; 
I  could  not  have  been  a  real  critic  without  that ;  and  I 
have  no  doubt  they  were  gratefully  accepted  and,  I 
hope,  never  acted  upon.  I  went  with  him  to  the  horse- 
ear  station  in  Harvard  Square,  as  my  frequent  wont 

351 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

was,  and  put  him  aboard  a  car  with  his  MS.  in  his 
hand,  stayed  and  reassured,  so  far  as  I  counted,  concern 
ing  it.  I  do  not  know  what  his  misgivings  were;  per 
haps  they  were  his  wife's  misgivings,  for  she  wished 
him  to  be  known  not  only  for  the  wild  and  boundless 
humor  that  was  in  him,  but  for  the  beauty  and  tender 
ness  and  "  natural  piety  " ;  and  she  would  not  have  had 
him  judged  by  a  too  close  fidelity  to  the  rude  conditions 
of  Tom  Sawyer's  life.  This  is  the  meaning  that  I  read 
into  the  fact  of  his  coining  to  me  with  those  doubts. 


xm 

CLEMEXS  had  then  and  for  many  years  the  habit  of 
writing  to  nie  about  what  he  was  doing,  and  still  more 
of  what  he  was  experiencing.  Nothing  struck  his  im 
agination,  in  or  out  of  the  daily  routine,  but  he  wished 
to  write  me  of  it,  and  he  wrote  with  the  greatest  ful 
ness  and  a  lavish  dramatization,  sometimes  to  the 
length  of  twenty  or  forty  pages,  so  that  I  have  now 
perhaps  fifteen  hundred  pages  of  his  letters.  They 
will  no  doubt  some  day  be  published,  but  I  am  not  even 
referring  to  them  in  these  records,  which  I  think  had 
best  come  to  the  reader  with  an  old  man's  faltcrings 
and  uncertainties.  With  his  frequent  absences  and  my 
own  abroad,  and  the  intrusion  of  calamitous  cares,  the 
rich  tide  of  his  letters  was  more  and  more  interrupted. 
At  times  it  almost  ceased,  and  then  it  would  come 
again,  a  torrent.  In  the  very  last  weeks  of  his  life 
he  burst  forth,  and,  though  too  weak  himself  to  write, 
he  dictated  his  rage  with  me  for  recommending  to  him 
a  certain  author  whose  truthfulness  he  could  not  deny, 
but  whom  he  hated  for  his  truthfulness  to  sordid  and 
ugly  conditions.  At  heart  Clemens  was  romantic,  and 
he  would  have  had  the  world  of  fiction  stately  and 
handsome  and  whatever  the  real  world  w^as  not;  but 
he  was  not  romanticistic,  and  he  was  too  helplessly  an 
artist  not  to  wish  his  own  work  to  show  life  as  he  had 
seen  it.  I  was  preparing  to  rap  him  back  for  these 
letters  when  I  read  that  he  had  got  home  to  die;  he 
\vould  have  liked  the  rapping  back. 

353 


LITEEARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

He  liked  coming  to  Boston,  especially  for  those 
luncheons  and  dinners  in  which  the  fertile  hospitality 
of  our  publisher,  Osgood,  abounded.  He  dwelt  equi 
distant  from  Boston  and  New  York,  and  he  had  special 
friends  in  New  York,  but  he  said  he  much  preferred 
coining  to  Boston;  of  late  years  he  never  went  there, 
and  he  had  lost  the  habit  of  it  long  before  he  came 
Lome  from  Europe  to  live  in  New  York.  At  these 
feasts,  which  were  often  of  after  -  dinner  -  speaking 
measure,  he  could  always  be  trusted  for  something  of 
amazing  delight-fulness.  Once,  when  Osgood  could 
think  of  no  other  occasion  for  a  dinner,  he  gave  him 
self  a  birthday  dinner,  and  asked  his  friends  and  au 
thors.  The  beautiful  and  splendid  trooper-like  Waring 
was  there,  and  I  recall  how  in  the  long,  rambling  speech 
in  which  Clemens  went  round  the  table  hitting  every 
head  at  it,  and  especially  visiting  Osgood  with  thanks 
for  his  ingenious  pretext  for  our  entertainment,  he 
congratulated  Waring  upon  his  engineering  genius  and 
his  hypnotic  control  of  municipal  governments.  He 
said  that  if  there  was  a  plan  for  draining  a  city  at  a 
cost  of  a  million,  by  seeking  the  level  of  the  water  in 
the  down-hill  course  of  the  sewers,  Waring  would  come 
with  a  plan  to  drain  that  town  up-hill  at  twice  the  cost 
and  carry  it  through  the  Common  Council  without  op 
position.  It  is  hard  to  say  whether  the  time  was  gladder 
at  these  dinners,  or  at  the  small  lunches  at  which  Os 
good  and  Aldrich  and  I  foregathered  with  him  and 
talked  the  afternoon  away  till  well  toward  the  winter 
twilight. 

He  was  a  great  figure,  an'd  the  principal  figure,  at 
one  of  the  first  of  the  now  worn-out  Authors'  Headings, 
which  was  held  in  the  Boston  Museum  to  aid  a  Long 
fellow  memorial.  It  was  the  late  George  Parsons  La- 
throp  (everybody  seems  to  be  late  in  these  sad  days) 

354 


who  imagined  the  reading,  but  when  it  came  to  a  price 
for  seats  I  can  always  claim  the  glory  of  fixing  it  at  five 
dollars.  The  price  if  not  the  occasion  proved  irre 
sistible,  and  the  museum  was  packed  from  the  floor 
to  the  topmost  gallery.  Norton  presided,  and  when 
it  came  Clemeus's  turn  to  read  he  introduced  him  with 
such  exquisite  praises  as  he  best  knew  how  to  give, 
but  before  he  closed  he  fell  a  prey  to  one  of  those 
lapses  of  tact  which  are  the  peculiar  peril  of  people 
of  the  greatest  tact.  He  was  reminded  of  Darwin's 
delight  in  Mark  Twain,  and  how  Avhen  he  came  from 
his  long  day's  exhausting  study,  and  sank  into  bed  at 
midnight,  he  took  up  a  volume  of  Mark  Twain,  whose 
books  he  always  kept  on  a  table  beside  him,  and  what 
ever  had  been  his  tormenting  problem,  or  excess  of  toil, 
he  felt  secure  of  a  good  night's  rest  from  it.  A  sort 
of  blank  ensued  which  Clemens  filled  in  the  only  pos 
sible  way.  He  said  he  should  always  be  glad  that  he 
had  contributed  to  the  repose  of  that  great  man,  whom 
science  owed  so  much,  and  then  without  waiting  for  the 
joy  in  every  breast  to  burst  forth,  he  began  to  read. 
It  was  curious  to  watch  his  triumph  with  the  house. 
His  carefully  studied  effects  would  reach  the  first  rows 
in  the  orchestra  first,  and  ripple  in  laughter  back  to  the 
standees  against  the  wall,  and  then  with  a  fine  resur 
gence  come  again  to  the  rear  orchestra  seats,  and 
so  rise  from  gallery  to  gallery  till  it  fell  back,  a 
cataract  of  applause  from  the  topmost  rows  of  seats. 
He  was  such  a  practised  speaker  that  he  knew  all 
the  stops  of  that  simple  instrument  man,  and  there 
is  no  doubt  that  these  results  were  accurately  intended 
from  his  unerring  knowledge.  He  was  the  most  con 
summate  public  performer  I  ever  saw,  and  it  was  an 
incomparable  pleasure  to  hear  him  lecture ;  on  the  plat 
form  he  was  the  great  and  finished  actor  which  he  prob- 
24  355 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

ably  would  not  have  been  on  the  stage.  He  was  fond 
of  private  theatricals,  and  liked  to  play  in  them  with 
his  children  and  their  friends,  in  dramatizations  of  such 
stories  of  his  as  The  Prince  and  the  Pauper;  but  I 
never  saw  him  in  any  of  these  scenes.  When  he  read 
his  manuscript  to  you,  it  was  with  a  thorough,  how 
ever  involuntary,  recognition  of  its  dramatic  qualities ; 
he  held  that  an  actor  added  fully  half  to  the  character 
the  author  created.  With  my  own  hurried  and  half 
hearted  reading  of  passages  which  I  wished  to  try  on 
him  from  unprinted  chapters  (say,  out  of  The  Undis 
covered  Country  or  A  Modern  Instance}  he  said  frank 
ly  that  my  reading  could  spoil  anything.  He  was 
realistic,  but  he  was  essentially  histrionic,  and  he  was 
rightly  so.  What  we  have  strongly  conceived  we  ought 
to  make  others  strongly  imagine,  and  we  ought  to  use 
every  genuine  art  to  that  end. 


XIV 

THERE  came  a  time  wlien  the  lecturing  which  had 
been  the  joy  of  his  prime  became  his  loathing,  loathing 
unutterable,  and  when  he  renounced  it  with  indescrib 
able  violence.  Yet  he  was  always  hankering  for  those 
fleshpots  whose  savor  lingered  on  his  palate  and  filled 
his  nostrils  after  his  withdrawal  from  the  platform. 
The  Authors'  Readings  when  they  had  won  their  brief 
popularity  abounded  in  suggestion  for  him.  Reading 
from  one's  book  was  not  so  bad  as  giving  a  lecture 
written  for  a  lecture's  purpose,  and  he  was  willing  at 
last  to  compromise.  He  had  a  magnificent  scheme  for 
touring  the  country  with  Aldrich  and  Mr.  G.  W.  Cable 
and  myself,  in  a  private  car,  with  a  cook  of  our  own, 
and  every  facility  for  living  on  the  fat  of  the  land. 
We  should  read  only  four  times  a  week,  in  an  enter 
tainment  that  should  not  last  more  than  an  hour  and 
a  half.  He  would  be  the  impresario,  and  would  guar 
antee  us  others  at  least  seventy-five  dollars  a  day,  and 
pay  every  expense  of  the  enterprise,  which  he  pro 
visionally  called  the  Circus,  himself.  But  Aldrich  and 
I  were  now  no  longer  in  those  earlier  thirties  when 
we  so  cheerfully  imagined  Memorable  Murders  for  sub 
scription  publication ;  we  both  abhorred  public  appear 
ances,  and,  at  any  rate,  I  was  going  to  Europe  for  a 
year.  So  the  plan  fell  through  except  as  regarded  Mr. 
Cable,  who,  in  his  way,  was  as  fine  a  performer  as 
Clemens,  and  could  both  read  and  sing  the  matter  of 

357 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

his  books.  On  a  far  less  stupendous  scale  they  two 
made  the  rounds  of  the  great  lecturing  circuit  together. 
But  I  believe  a  famous  lecture-manager  had  charge  of 
them  and  travelled  with  them. 

He  was  a  most  sanguine  man,  a  most  amiable  per 
son,  and  such  a  believer  in  fortune  that  Clemens  used 
to  say  of  him,  as  he  said  of  one  of  his  early  publishers, 
that  you  could  rely  upon  fifty  per  cent,  of  everything 
he  promised.  I  myself  many  years  later  became  a 
follower  of  this  hopeful  prophet,  and  I  can  testify  that 
in  my  case  at  least  he  was  able  to  keep  ninety-nine, 
and  even  a  hundred,  per  cent,  of  his  word.  It  was  I 
who  was  much  nearer  failing  of  mine,  for  I  promptly 
began  to  lose  sleep  from  the  nervous  stress  of  my  lectur 
ing  and  from  the  gratifying  but  killing  receptions  after 
ward,  and  I  was  truly  in  that  state  from  insomnia 
which  Clemens  recognized  in  the  brief  letter  I  got  from 
him  in  the  Western  city,  after  half  a  dozen  wakeful 
nights.  He  sardonically  congratulated  me  on  having 
gone  into  "  the  lecture  field,"  and  then  he  said :  "  I 
know  where  you  are  now.  You  are  in  hell." 

It  was  this  perdition  which  he  re-entered  when  he 
undertook  that  round-the-world  lecturing  tour  for  the 
payment  of  the  debts  left  to  him  by  the  bankruptcy  of 
his  firm  in  the  publishing  business.  It  was  not  purely 
perdition  for  him,  or,  rather,  it  was  perdition  for  only 
one-half  of  him,  the  author-half;  for  the  actor-half  it 
was  paradise.  The  author  who  takes  up  lecturing  with 
out  the  ability  to  give  histrionic  support  to  the  literary 
reputation  which  he  brings  to  the  crude  test  of  his 
reader's  eyes  and  ears,  invokes  a  peril  and  a  mis 
ery  unknown  to  the  lecturer  who  has  made  his  first 
public  from  the  platform.  Clemens  was  victori 
ous  on  the  platform  from  the  beginning,  and  it 
would  be  folly  to  pretend  that  he  did  not  exult  in 

358 


MY    MAKK    TWAIN 

his  triumphs  there.  But  I  suppose,  with  the  wearing 
nerves  of  middle  life,  he  hated  more  and  more  the 
personal  swarming  of  interest  upon  him,  and  all  the 
inevitable  clatter  of  the  thing.  Yet  he  faced  it,  and  he 
labored  round  our  tiresome  globe  that  he  might  pay  the 
uttermost  farthing  of  debts  which  he  had  not  know 
ingly  contracted,  the  debts  of  his  partners  who  had 
meant  well  and  done  ill,  not  because  they  were  evil, 
but  because  they  were  unwise,  and  as  unfit  for  their 
work  as  he  was.  "  Pay  what  thou  owest."  That  is 
right,  even  when  thou  owcst  it  by  the  error  of  others, 
and  even  when  thou  owest  it  to  a  bank,  which  had  not 
lent  it  from  love  of  thee,  but  in  the  hard  line  of  busi 
ness  and  thy  need. 

Clemens's  behavior  in  this  matter  redounded  to  his 
glory  among  the  nations  of  the  whole  earth,  and  es 
pecially  in  this  nation,  so  wrapped  in  commerce  and 
so  little  used  to  honor  among  its  many  thieves.  He  had 
behaved  like  Walter  Scott,  as  millions  rejoiced  to  know, 
who  had  not  known  how  Walter  Scott  had  behaved  till 
they  knew  it  was  like  Clemens.  No  doubt  it  will  bo 
put  to  his  credit  in  the  books  of  the  Recording  Angel, 
but  what  the  Judge  of  all  the  Earth  will  say  of  it  at 
the  Last  Day  there  is  no  telling.  I  should  not  be  sur 
prised  if  He  accounted  it  of  less  merit  than  some  other 
things  that  Clemens  did  and  was:  less  than  his  abhor 
rence  of  the  Spanish  War,  and  the  destruction  of  the 
South-African  republics,  and  our  deceit  of  the  Fili 
pinos,  and  his  hate  of  slavery,  and  his  payment  of  his 
portion  of  our  race's  debt  to  the  race  of  the  colored 
student  whom  he  saw  through  college,  and  his  support 
of  a  poor  artist  for  three  years  in  Paris,  and  his  loan 
of  opportunity  to  the  youth  who  became  the  most  brill 
iant  of  our  actor-dramatists,  and  his  eager  pardon  of 
the  thoughtless  girl  who  was  near  paying  the  penalty 

359 


LITEEAEY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

of  her  impertinence  with  the  loss  of  her  place,  and  his 
remembering  that  the  insolent  brakeman  got  so  few 
dollars  a  month,  and  his  sympathy  for  working-men 
standing  up  to  money  in  their  Unions,  and  even  his 
pity  for  the  wounded  bird  throbbing  out  its  little  life 
on  the  grass  for  the  pleasure  of  the  cruel  fool  who  shot 
it.  These  and  the  thousand  other  charities  and  benefi 
cences  in  which  he  abounded,  openly  or  secretly,  may 
avail  him  more  than  the  discharge  of  his  firm's  liabili 
ties  with  the  Judge  of  all  the  Earth,  who  surely  will  do 
right,  but  whose  measures  and  criterions  no  man  knows, 
and  I  least  of  all  men. 

He  made  no  great  show  of  sympathy  with  people  in 
their  anxieties,  but  it  never  failed,  and  at  a  time  when 
I  lay  sick  for  many  weeks  his  letters  were  of  comfort 
to  those  who  feared  I  might  not  rise  again.  His  hand 
was  out  in  help  for  those  who  needed  help,  and  in  kind 
ness  for  those  who  needed  kindness.  There  remains  in 
my  mind  the  dreary  sense  of  a  long,  long  drive  to  the 
uttermost  bounds  of  the  South  End  at  Boston,  where  he 
went  to  call  upon  some  obscure  person  whose  claim 
stretched  in  a  lengthening  chain  from  his  early  days 
in  Missouri — a  most  inadequate  person,  in  whose  vac 
uity  the  gloom  of  the  dull  day  deepened  till  it  was 
dmost  too  deep  for  tears.  He  bore  the  ordeal  with 
grim  heroism,  and  silently  smoked  away  the  sense  of 
it,  as  we  drove  back  to  Cambridge,  in  his  slippered  feet, 
sombrely  musing,  sombrely  swearing.  But  he  knew  he 
had  done  the  right,  the  kind  thing,  and  he  was  content. 
He  came  the  whole  way  from  Hartford  to  go  with  me 
to  a  friendless  play  of  mine,  which  Alessandro  Salvini 
was  giving  in  a  series  of  matinees  to  houses  never  en 
larging  themselves  beyond  the  count  of  the  brave  two 
hundred  who  sat  it  through,  and  he  stayed  my  fainting 
spirit  with  a  cheer  beyond  flagons,  joining  me  in  my 

360 


MY    MAEK    TWAIN 

joke    at    the    misery    of    it,    and    carrying    the    fun 
farther. 

Before  that  he  had  come  to  witness  the  aesthetic 
suicide  of  Anna  Dickinson,  who  had  been  a  flaming 
light  of  the  political  platform  in  the  war  days,  and 
had  been  left  by  them  consuming  in  a  hapless  am 
bition  for  the  theatre.  The  poor  girl  had  had  a  play 
written  especially  for  her,  and  as  Anne  Boleyn  she 
ranted  and  exhorted  through  the  five  acts,  drawing  ever 
nearer  the  utter  defeat  of  the  anti-climax.  We  could 
hardly  look  at  each  other  for  pity,  Clemens  sitting  there 
in  the  box  he  had  taken,  with  his  shaggy  head  out  over 
the  corner  and  his  slippered  feet  curled  under  him: 
he  either  went  to  a  place  in  his  slippers  or  he  carried 
them  with  him,  and  put  them  on  as  soon  as  he  could 
put  off  his  boots.  When  it  was  so  that  we  could  not 
longer  follow  her  failure  and  live,  he  began  to  talk  of 
the  absolute  close  of  her  career  which  the  thing  was, 
and  how  probably  she  had  no  conception  that  it  was 
the  end.  He  philosophized  the  mercifulness  of  the  fact, 
and  of  the  ignorance  of  most  of  us,  when  mortally  sick 
or  fatally  wounded.  We  think  it  is  not  the  end,  be 
cause  we  have  never  ended  before,  and  we  do  not  see 
how  we  can  end.  Some  can  push  by  the  awful  hour 
and  live  again,  but  for  Anna  Dickinson  there  could 
be,  and  was,  no  such  palingenesis.  Of  course  we  got 
that  solemn  joy  out  of  reading  her  fate  aright  which 
is  the  compensation  of  the  wise  spectator  in  witness 
ing  the  inexorable  doom  of  others. 


XV 

WHEN  Messrs.  Houghton  &  Mifflin  became  owners  of 
The  Atlantic  Monthly,  Mr.  Houghton  fancied  having 
some  breakfasts  and  dinners,  which  should  bring  the 
publisher  and  the  editor  face  to  face  with  the  con 
tributors,  who  were  bidden  from  far  and  near.  Of 
course,  the  subtle  fiend  of  advertising,  who  has  now 
grown  so  unblushing  bold,  lurked  under  the  covers  at 
these  banquets,  and  the  junior  partner  and  the  young 
editor  had  their  joint  and  separate  fine  anguishes  of 
misgiving  as  to  the  taste  and  the  principle  of  them; 
but  they  were  really  very  simple-hearted  and  honestly 
meant  hospitalities,  and  they  prospered  as  they  ought, 
aiul  gave  great  pleasure  and  no  pain.  I  forget  some 
of  the  "  emergent  occasions,"  but  I  am  sure  of  a  birth 
day  dinner  most  unexpectedly  accepted  by  Whitticr, 
and  a  birthday  luncheon  to  Mrs.  Stowe,  and  I  think  a 
birthday  dinner  to  Longfellow;  but  the  passing  years 
have  left  me  in  the  dark  as  to  the  pretext  of  that  supper 
at  which  Clemens  made  his  awful  speech,  and  came  so 
near  being  the  death  of  us  all.  At  the  breakfasts  and 
luncheons  we  had  the  pleasure  of  our  lady  contributors' 
company,  but  that  night  there  were  only  men,  and  be 
cause  of  our  great  strength  we  survived. 

I  suppose  the  year  was  about  1879,  but  here  the 
almanac  is  unimportant,  and  I  can  only  say  that  it  was 
after  Clemens  had  become  a  very  valued  contributor 
of  the  magazine,  where  he  found  himself  to  his  own 

362 


MY    MARK    TWAIN" 

great  explicit  satisfaction.  He  had  jubilantly  accepted 
our  invitation,  and  had  promised  a  speech,  which  it 
appeared  afterward  he  had  prepared  with  unusual  care 
and  confidence.  It  was  his  custom  always  to  think  out 
his  speeches,  mentally  wording  them,  and  then  memo 
rizing  them  by  a  peculiar  system  of  mnemonics  which 
he  had  invented.  On  the  dinner-table  a  certain  suc 
cession  of  knife,  spoon,  salt-cellar,  and  butter-plate  sym 
bolized  a  train  of  ideas,  and  on  the  billiard-table  a  ball, 
a  cue,  and  a  piece  of  chalk  served  the  same  purpose. 
With  a  diagram  of  these  printed  on  the  brain  he  had 
full  command  of  the  phrases  which  his  excogitation 
had  attached  to  them,  and  which  embodied  the  ideas  in 
perfect  form.  He  believed  he  had  been  particularly 
fortunate  in  his  notion  for  the  speech  of  that  evening, 
and  he  had  worked  it  out  in  joyous  self-reliance.  It 
was  the  notion  of  three  tramps,  three  dead-beats,  visit 
ing  a  California  mining-camp,  and  imposing  themselves 
upon  the  innocent  miners  as  respectively  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,  and  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes.  The  humor  of  the  conception  must 
prosper  or  must  fail  according  to  the  mood  of  the. 
hearer,  but  Clemens  felt  sure  of  compelling  this  to 
sympathy,  and  he  looked  forward  to  an  unparalleled 
triumph. 

But  there  were  two  things  that  he  had  not  taken  into 
account.  One  was  the  species  of  religious  veneration 
in  which  these  men  were  held  by  those  nearest  them, 
a  thing  that  I  should  not  be  able  to  realize  to  people 
remote  from  them  in  time  and  place.  They  were  men 
of  extraordinary  dignity,  of  the  thing  called  presence, 
for  want  of  some  clearer  word,  so  that  no  one  could  well 
approach  them  in  a  personally  light  or  trifling  spirit. 
I  do  not  suppose  that  anybody  more  truly  valued  them 
or  more  piously  loved  them  than  Clemens  himself,  but 

363 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

the  intoxication  of  his  fancy  carried  him  beyond  the 
bounds  of  that  regard,  and  emboldened  him  to  the 
other  thing  which  he  had  not  taken  into  account — name 
ly,  the  immense  hazard  of  working  his  fancy  out  before 
their  faces,  and  expecting  them  to  enter  into  the  delight 
of  it.  If  neither  Emerson,  nor  Longfellow,  nor  Holmes 
had  been  there,  the  scheme  might  possibly  have  carried, 
but  even  this  is  doubtful,  for  those  who  so  devoutly 
honored  them  would  have  overcome  their  horror  with 
difficulty,  and  perhaps  would  not  have  overcome  it  at 
all. 

The  publisher,  wTith  a  modesty  very  ungrateful  to 
me,  had  abdicated  his  office  of  host,  and  I  was  the 
hapless  president,  fulfilling  the  abhorred  function  of 
calling  people  to  their  feet  and  making  them  speak. 
When  I  came  to  Clemens  I  introduced  him  •with  the 
cordial  admiring  I  had  for  him  as  one  of  my  greatest 
contributors  and  dearest  friends.  Here,  I  said,  in  sum, 
was  a  humorist  who  never  left  you  hanging  your  head 
for  having  enjoyed  his  joke;  and  then  the  amazing 
mistake,  the  bewildering  blunder,  the  cruel  catastrophe 
was  upon  us.  I  believe  that  after  the  scope  of  the 
burlesque  made  itself  clear,  there  was  no  one  there,  in 
cluding  the  burlesquer  himself,  who  w^as  not  smitten 
with  a  desolating  dismay.  There  fell  a  silence,  weigh 
ing  many  tons  to  the  square  inch,  which  deepened  from 
moment  to  moment,  and  was  broken  only  by  the  hys 
terical  and  blood-curdling  laughter  of  a  single  guest, 
whose  name  shall  not  be  handed  down  to  infamy.  No 
body  knew  whether  to  look  at  the  speaker  or  down  at 
his  plate.  I  chose  my  plate  as  the  least  affliction,  and 
so  I  do  not  know  how  Clemens  looked,  except  when  I 
stole  a  glance  at  him,  and  saw  him  standing  solitary 
amid  his  appalled  and  appalling  listeners,  with  his  joke 
dead  on  his  hands.  From  a  first  glance  at  the  great 

364 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

three  whom  his  jest  had  made  its  theme,  I  was  aware 
of  Longfellow  sitting  upright,  and  regarding  the  hu 
morist  with  an  air  of  pensive  puzzle,  of  Holmes  busily 
writing  on  his  menu,  with  a  well-feigned  effect  of  pre 
occupation,  and  of  Emerson,  holding  his  elbows,  and 
listening  with  a  sort  of  Jovian  oblivion  of  this  nether 
world  in  that  lapse  of  memory  which  saved  him  in 
those  later  years  from  so  much  bother.  Clemens  must 
have  dragged  his  joke  to  the  climax  and  left  it  there, 
but  I  cannot  say  this  from  any  sense  of  the  fact.  Of 
what  happened  afterward  at  the  table  where  the  im 
mense,  the  wholly  innocent,  the  truly  unimagined  af 
front  was  offered,  I  have  no  longer  the  least  remem 
brance.  I  next  remember  being  in  a  room  of  the  hotel, 
where  Clemens  was  not  to  sleep,  but  to  toss  in  despair, 
and  Charles  Dudley  Warner's  saying,  in  the  gloom, 
"  Well,  Mark,  you're  a  funny  fellow."  It  was  as  well 
as  anything  else  he  could  have  said,  but  Clemens  seemed 
unable  to  accept  the  tribute. 

I  stayed  the  night  with  him,  and  the  next  morning, 
after  a  haggard  breakfast,  we  drove  about  and  he  made 
some  purchases  of  bric-a-brac  for  his  house  in  Hart 
ford,  with  a  soul  as  far  away  from  bric-a-brac  as  ever 
the  soul  of  man  was.  He  went  home  by  an  early  train, 
and  he  lost  no  time  in  writing  back  to  the  three  divine 
personalities  which  he  had  so  involuntarily  seemed  to 
flout.  They  all  wrote  back  to  him,  making  it  as  light 
for  him  as  they  could.  I  have  heard  that  Emerson  was 
a  good  deal  mystified,  and  in  his  sublime  forgetfulness 
asked,  Who  was  this  gentleman  who  appeared  to  think 
he  had  offered  him  some  sort  of  annoyance  ?  But  I 
am  not  sure  that  this  is  accurate.  What  I  am  sure  of 
is  that  Longfellow,  a  few  days  after,  in  my  study, 
stopped  before  a  photograph  of  Clemens  and  said,  "  Ah, 
he  is  a  wag!"  and  nothing  more.  Holmes  told  me, 

365 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

with  deep  emotion,  such  as  a  brother  humorist  might 
well  feel,  that  he  had  not  lost  an  instant  in  replying  to 
Clement's  letter,  and  assuring  him  that  there  had  not 
heen  the  least  offence,  and  entreating  him  never  to 
think  of  the  matter  again.  "  He  said  that  he  was  a 
fool,  but  he  was  God's  fool,"  Holmes  quoted  from  the 
letter,  with  a  true  sense  of  the  pathos  and  the  humor  of 
the  self-abasement. 

To  me  Clemens  wrote  a  week  later,  "  It  doesn't  get 
any  better;  it  burns  like  fire."  But  now  I  understand 
that  it  was  not  shame  that  burnt,  but  rage  for  a  blun 
der  which  he  had  so  incredibly  committed.  That  to 
have  conceived  of  those  men,  the  most  dignified  in  our 
literature,  our  civilization,  as  impersonable  by  three 
hoboes,  and  then  to  have  imagined  that  he  could  ask 
them  personally  to  enjoy  the  monstrous  travesty,  was 
a  break,  lie  saw  too  late,  for  which  there  was  no  repair. 
Yet  the  time  came,  and  not  so  very  long  afterward, 
when  some  mention  was  made  of  the  incident  as  a  mis 
take,  and  he  said,  with  all  his  fierceness,  "  But  I  don't 
admit  that  it  was  a  mistake,"  and  it  was  not  so  in  the 
minds  of  all  witnesses  at  second  hand.  The  morning 
after  the  dreadful  dinner  there  came  a  glowing  note 
from  Professor  Child,  who  had  read  the  newspaper  re 
port  of  it,  praising  Clernens's  burlesque  as  the  richest 
piece  of  humor  in  the  world,  and  betraying  no  sense 
of  incongruity  in  its  perpetration  in  the  presence  of  its 
victims.  I  think  it  must  always  have  ground  in  Clein- 
ens's  soul,  that  he  was  the  prey  of  circumstances,  and 
that  if  he  had  some  more  favoring  occasion  he  could 
retrieve  his  loss  in  it  by  giving  the  thing  the  right 
setting.  !N"ot  more  than  two  or  three  years  ago,  he 
came  to  try  me  as  to  trying  it  again  at  a  meeting  of 
newspaper  men  in  Washington.  I  had  to  own  my  fears, 
while  I  alleged  Child's  note  on  the  other  hand,  but  in 

3G6 


MY    MAKE    TWAIN 

the  end  he  did  not  try  it  with  the  newspaper  men.  I 
do  not  know  whether  he  has  ever  printed  it  or  not,  but 
since  the  thing  happened  I  have  often  wondered  how 
much  offence  there  really  was  in  it.  I  am  not  sure  but 
the  horror  of  the  spectators  read  more  .indignation  into 
the  subjects  of  the  hapless  drolling  than  they  felt.  But 
it  must  have  been  difficult  for  them  to  bear  it  with 
equanimity.  To  be  sure,  they  were  not  themselves 
mocked;  the  joke  was,  of  course,  beside  them;  never 
theless,  their  personality  was  trifled  with,  and  I  could 
only  end  by  reflecting  that  if  I  had  been  in  their  place 
I  should  not  have  liked  it  myself.  Clemens  would  have 
liked  it  himself,  for  he  had  the  heart  for  that  sort  of 
wild  play,  and  he  so  loved  a  joke  that  even  if  it  took 
the  form  of  a  liberty,  and  was  yet  a  good  joke,  he  would 
have  loved  it.  But  perhaps  this  burlesque  was  not  a 
good  joke. 


XVI 

CLEMENS  was  oftenest  at  my  house  in  Cambridge,  but 
he  was  also  sometimes  at  my  house  in  Belmont ;  when, 
after  a  year  in  Europe,  we  went  to  live  in  Boston,  he 
was  more  rarely  with  us.  We  could  never  be  long  to 
gether  without  something  out  of  the  common  happen 
ing,  and  one  day  something  far  out  of  the  common 
happened,  which  fortunately  refused  the  nature  of 
absolute  tragedy,  while  remaining  rather  the  saddest 
sort  of  comedy.  We  were  looking  out  of  my  library 
window  on  that  view  of  the  Charles  which  I  was  so 
proud  of  sharing  with  my  all-but-next-door  neighbor, 
Doctor  Holmes,  when  another  friend  who  was  with  us 
called  out  with  curiously  impersonal  interest,  "  Oh, 
see  that  woman  getting  into  the  water!"  This  would 
have  excited  curiosity  and  alarmed  anxiety  far  less 
lively  than  ours,  and  Clemens  and  I  rushed  down 
stairs  and  out  through  my  basement  and  back  gate. 
At  the  same  time  -a  coachman  came  out  of  a  stable 
next  door,  and  grappled  by  the  shoulders  a  woman  who 
was  somewhat  deliberately  getting  down  the  steps  to 
the  water  over  the  face  of  the  embankment.  Before  we 
could  reach  them  he  had  pulled  her  up  to  the  drive 
way,  and  stood  holding  her  there  while  she  crazily 
grieved  at  her  rescue.  As  soon  as  he  saw  us  he  went 
back  into  his  stable,  and  left  us  with  the  poor  wild 
creature  on  our  hands.  She  was  not  very  young  and 
not  very  pretty,  and  we  could  not  have  flattered  our- 

368 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

selves  with  the  notion  of  anything  romantic  in  her  sui 
cidal  mania,  but  we  could  take  her  on  the  broad  human 
level,  and  on  this  we  proposed  to  escort  her  up  Beacon 
Street  till  we  could  give  her  into  the  keeping  of  one 
of  those  kindly  policemen  whom  our  neighborhood 
knew.  Naturally  there  was  no  policeman  known  to 
us  or  unknown  the  whole  way  to  the  Public  Garden. 
We  had  to  circumvent  our  charge  in  her  present  design 
of  drowning  herself,  and  walk  her  past  the  streets  cross 
ing  Beacon  to  the  river.  At  these  points  it  needed  con 
siderable  reasoning  to  overcome  her  wish  and  some  ac 
tive  manoeuvring  in  both  of  us  to  enforce  our  arguments. 
Xobody  else  appeared  to  be  interested,  and  though  we- 
did  not  court  publicity  in  the  performance  of  the  duty 
so  strangely  laid  upon  us,  still  it  was  rather  disap 
pointing  to  be  so  entirely  ignored. 

There  are  some  four  or  five  crossings  to  the  river 
between  302  Beacon  Street  and  the  Public  Garden, 
and  the  suggestions  at  our  command  were  pretty  well 
exhausted  by  the  time  we  reached  it.  Still  the  expected 
policeman  was  nowhere  in  sight;  but  a  brilliant  thought 
occurred  to  Clemens.  He  asked  me  where  the  nearest 
police  station  was,  and  when  I  told  him,  he  started  off 
at  his  highest  speed,  leaving  me  in  sole  charge  of  our 
hapless  ward.  All  my  powers  of  suasion  were  now 
taxed  to  the  utmost,  and  I  began  attracting  attention 
as  a  short,  stout  gentleman  in  early  middle  life  en 
deavoring  to  distrain  a  respectable  female  of  her  per 
sonal  liberty,  when  his  accomplice  had  abandoned  him 
to  his  wicked  design.  After  a  much  longer  time  than 
I  thought  /  should  have  taken  to  get  a  policeman  from 
the  station,  Clemens  reappeared  in  easy  conversation 
with  an  officer  who  had  probably  realized  that  he  was 
in  the  company  of  Mark  Twain,  and  was  in  no  hurry 
to  end  the  interview.  He  took  possession  of  our  cap- 

369 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

tivc,  and  we  saw  her  no  more.  I  now  wonder  that  with 
our  joint  instinct  for  failure  we  ever  got  rid  of  her; 
but  I  ana  sure  we  did,  and  few  things  in  life  have  given 
me  greater  relief.  When  we  got  back  to  my  house  we 
found  the  friend  we  had  left  there  quite  unruffled  and 
not  much  concerned  to  know  the  facts  of  our  adventure. 
My  impression  is  that  he  had  been  taking  a  nap  on 
my  lounge;  he  appeared  refreshed  and  even  gay;  but 
if  I  am  inexact  in  these  details  he  is  alive  to  refute  me. 


XVII 

A  LITTLE  after  this  Clemens  went  abroad  with  his 
family,  and  lived  several  years  in  Germany.  His  let 
ters  still  came,  but  at  longer  intervals,  and  the  thread 
of  our  intimate  relations  was  inevitably  broken.  He 
would  write  me  when  something  I  had  written  pleased 
him,  or  when  something  signal  occurred  to  him,  or 
some  political  or  social  outrage  stirred  him  to  wrath, 
and  v  he  wished  to  free  his  mind  in  pious  profanity. 
During  this  sojourn  he  came  near  dying  of  pneumonia 
in  Berlin,  and  he  had  slight  relapses  from  it  after  com 
ing  home.  In  Berlin  also  he  had  the  honor  of  dining 
with  the  German  Emperor  at  the  table  of  a  cousin 
married  to  a  high  officer  of  the  court.  Clemens  was  a 
man  to  enjoy  such  a  distinction ;  he  knew  how  to  take 
it  as  a  delegated  recognition  from  the  German  people; 
but  as  coming  from  a  rather  cockahoop  sovereign  who 
had  as  yet  only  his  sovereignty  to  value  himself  upon, 
he  was  not  very  proud  of  it.  He  expressed  a  quiet  dis 
dain  of  the  event  as  between  the  imperiality  and  him 
self,  on  whom  it  was  supposed  to  confer  such  glory, 
crowning  his  life  with  the  topmost  leaf  of  laurel.  He 
was  in  the  same  mood  in  his  account  of  an  English 
dinner  many  years  before,  where  there  was  a  "  little 
Scotch  lord  "  present,  to  whom  the  English  tacitly  re 
ferred  Clemens's  talk,  and  laughed  when  the  lord  laugh 
ed,  and  were  grave  when  he  failed  to  smile.  Of  all  the 
men  I  have  known  he  was  the  farthest  from  a  snob, 

25  371 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

though  he  valued  recognition,  and  liked  the  flattery  of 
the  fashionable  fair  when  it  came  in  his  way.  He 
would  not  go  out  of  his  way  for  it,  but  like  most  able 
and  brilliant  men  he  loved  the  minds  of  women,  their 
wit,  their  agile  cleverness,  their  sensitive  perception, 
their  humorous  appreciation,  the  saucy  things  they 
would  say,  and  their  pretty,  temerarious  defiances. 
He  had,  of  course,  the  keenest  sense  of  what  was  truly 
dignified  and  truly  undignified  in  people;  but  he  was 
not  really  interested  in  what  we  call  society  affairs ; 
they  scarcely  existed  for  him,  though  his  books  witness 
how  he  abhorred  the  dreadful  fools  who  through  some 
chance  of  birth  or  wealth  hold  themselves  different  from 
other  men. 

Commonly  he  did  not  keep  things  to  himself,  es 
pecially  dislikes  and  condemnations.  Upon  most  cur 
rent  events  he  had  strong  opinions,  and  he  uttered  them 
strongly.  After  a  while  he  was  silent  in  them,  but  if 
you  tried  him  you  found  him  in  them  still.  He  was 
tremendously  worked  up  by  a  certain  famous  trial,  as 
most  of  us  were  who  lived  in  the  time  of  it.  He  believed 
the  accused  guilty,  but  when  we  met  some  months  after 
it  was  over,  and  I  tempted  him  to  speak  his  mind  upon 
it,  he  would  only  say.  The  man  had  suffered  enough ; 
as  if  the  man  had  expiated  his  wrong,  and  he  was  not 
going  to  do  anything  to  renew  his  penalty.  I  found 
that  very  curious,  very  delicate.  His  continued  blame 
could  not  come  to  the  sufferer's  knowledge,  but  he  felt 
it  his  duty  to  forbear  it. 

He  was  apt  to  wear  himself  out  in  the  vehemence  of 
his  resentments;  or,  he  had  so  spent  himself  in  utter 
ing  them  that  he  had  literally  nothing  more  to  say. 
You  could  offer  Clemens  offences  that  would  anger 
other  men  and  he  did  not  mind ;  he  would  account  for 
them  from  human  nature;  but  if  he  thought  you  had 

372 


MY    MAEK    TWAIN 

in  any  way  played  him  false  you  were  anathema  and 
maranatha  forever.  Yet  not  forever,  perhaps,  for  by- 
and-by,  after  years,  he  would  be  silent.  There  were 
two  men,  half  a  generation  apart  in  their  succession, 
whom  he  thought  equally  atrocious  in  their  treason  to 
him,  and  of  whom  he  used  to  talk  terrifyingly,  even 
after  they  were  out  of  the  world.  He  went  farther  than 
Heine,  who  said  that  he  forgave  his  enemies,  but  not 
till  they  were  dead.  Clemens  did  not  forgive  his  dead 
enemies;  their  death  seemed  to  deepen  their  crimes, 
like  a  base  evasion,  or  a  cowardly  attempt  to  escape; 
he  pursued  them  to  the  grave;  he  would  like  to  dig 
them  up  and  take  vengeance  upon  their  clay.  So  he  said, 
but  no  doubt  he  would  not  have  hurt  them  if  he  had 
had  them  living  before  him.  He  was  generous  with 
out  stint;  he  trusted  without  measure,  but  where  his 
generosity  was  abused,  or  his  trust  betrayed,  he  was  a 
fire  of  vengeance,  a  consuming  flame  of  suspicion 
that  no  sprinkling  of  cool  patience  from  others  could 
quench ;  it  had  to  burn  itself  out.  He  was  eagerly  and 
lavishly  hospitable,  but  if  a  man  seemed  willing  to  bat 
ten  on  him,  or  in  any  way  to  lie  down  upon  him,  Clem 
ens  despised  him  unutterably.  In.  his  frenzies  of  re 
sentment  or  suspicion  he  would  not,  and  doubtless  could 
not,  listen  to  reason.  But  if  between  the  paroxysms 
he  were  confronted  with  the  facts  he  would  own  them, 
no  matter  how  much  they  told  against  him.  At  one 
period  he  fancied  that  a  certain  newspaper  was  hound 
ing  him  with  biting  censure  and  poisonous  paragraphs, 
and  he  was  filling  himself  up  with  wrath  to  be  duly 
discharged  on  the  editor's  head.  Later,  he  wrote  me 
with  a  humorous  joy  in  his  mistake  that  Warner  had 
advised  him  to  have  the  paper  watched  for  these  in 
juries.  He  had  done  so,  and  how  many  mentions  of 
him  did  I  reckon  he  had  found  in  three  months  ?  Just 

373 


LITERARY    FEIEXDS    AXD    ACQUAINTANCE 

two,  and  they  were  rather  indifferent  than  unfriendly. 
So  the  paper  was  acquitted,  and  the  editor's  life  was 
spared.  The  wretch  never  knew  how  near  he  was  to 
losing  it,  with  incredible  preliminaries  of  obloquy,  and 
a  subsequent  devotion  to  lasting  infamy. 


XVIII 

His  memory  for  favors  was  as  good  as  for  injuries, 
and  lie  liked  to  return  your  friendliness  with  as  loud 
a  baud  of  music  as  could  be  bought  or  bribed  for  the 
occasion.  All  that  you  had  to  do  was  to  signify  that 
you  wanted  his  help.  "When  my  father  was  consul  at 
Toronto  during  Arthur's  administration,  he  fancied 
that  his  place  was  in  danger,  and  he  appealed  to  me. 
In  turn  I  appealed  to  Clemens,  bethinking  myself  of 
his  friendship  with  Grant  and  Grant's  friendship  with 
Arthur.  I  asked  him  to  write  to  Grant  in  my  father's 
behalf,  but  Xo,  he  answered  me,  I  must  come  to  Hart 
ford,  and  we  would  go  on  to  Xew  York  together  and  see 
Grant  personally.  This  was  before,  and  long  before, 
Clemens  became  Grant's  publisher  and  splendid  bene 
factor,  but  the  men  liked  each  other  as  such  men  could 
not  help  doing.  Clemens  made  the  appointment,  and 
we  went  to  find  Grant  in  his  business  office,  that  place 
where  his  business  innocence  was  afterward  so  be 
trayed.  He  was  very  simple  and  very  cordial,  and  I 
was  instantly  the  more  at  home  with  him,  because  his 
voice  was  the  soft,  rounded,  Ohio  River  accent  to  which 
my  years  were  earliest  used  from  my  steamboating  un 
cles,  my  earliest  heroes.  When  I  stated  my  business  he 
merely  said,  Oh  no ;  that  must  not  be ;  he  would  write 
to  Mr.  Arthur ;  and  he  did  so  that  day ;  and  my  father 
lived  to  lay  down  his  office,  when  he  tired  of  it,  with  no 
urgence  from  above. 

375 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

It  is  not  irrelevant  to  Clemens  to  say  that  Grant 
seemed  to  like  finding  himself  in  company  with  two 
literary  men,  one  of  whom  at  least  he  could  make  sure 
of,  and  unlike  that  silent  man  he  was  reputed,  he  talked 
constantly,  and  so  far  as  he  might  he  talked  literature. 
At  least  he  talked  of  John  Phoenix,  that  delightfulest 
of  the  early  Pacific  Slope  humorists,  whom  he  had 
known  under  his  real  name  of  George  II.  Derby,  when 
they  were  fellow-cadets  at  West  Point.  It  was  mighty 
pretty,  as  Pepys  would  say,  to  see  the  delicate  deference 
Clemens  paid  our  plain  hero,  and  the  manly  respect 
with  which  he  listened.  While  Grant  talked,  his  lunch 
eon  was  brought  in  from  some  unassuming  restaurant 
near  by,  and  he  asked  us  to  join  him  in  the  baked 
beans  and  coffee  which  were  served  us  in  a  little  room 
out  of  the  office  with  about  the  same  circumstance  as 
at  a  railroad  refreshment-counter.  The  baked  beans 
and  coffee  were  of  about  the  railroad  -  refreshment 
quality;  but  eating  them  with  Grant  was  like  sitting 
down  to  baked  beans  and  coffee  with  Julius  Caesar, 
or  Alexander,  or  some  other  great  Plutarchan  cap 
tain. 

One  of  the  highest  satisfactions  of  Clemens's  often 
supremely  satisfactory  life  was  his  relation  to  Grant. 
It  was  his  proud  joy  to  tell  how  he  found  Grant  about 
to  sign  a  contract  for  his  book  on  certainly  very  good 
terms,  and  said  to  him  that  he  would  himself  publish 
the  book  and  give  him  a  percentage  three  times  as 
large.  He  said  Grant  seemed  to  doubt  whether  he  could 
honorably  withdraw  from  the  negotiation  at  that  point, 
but  Clemens  overbore  his  scruples,  and  it  was  his  un 
paralleled  privilege,  his  princely  pleasure,  to  pay  the 
author  a  far  larger  check  for  his  work  than  had  ever 
been  paid  to  an  author  before.  He  valued  even 
more  than  this  splendid  opportunity  the  sacred  mo- 

376 


MY    MAKK    TWAIN 

ments  in  which  their  business  brought  him  into  the 
presence  of  the  slowly  dying,  heroically  living  man 
whom  he  was  so  befriending;  and  he  told  me  in 
words  which  surely  lost  none  of  their  simple  pathos 
through  his  report  how  Grant  described  his  suffer 
ing. 

The  prosperity  of  this  venture  was  the  beginning 
of  Clemens's  adversity,  for  it  led  to  excesses  of  enter 
prise  which  were  forms  of  dissipation.  The  young 
sculptor  who  had  come  back  to  him  from  Paris  mod 
elled  a  small  bust  of  Grant,  which  Clemens  multiplied 
in  great  numbers  to  his  great  loss,  and  the  success  of 
Grant's  book  tempted  him  to  launch  on  publishing  seas 
where  his  bark  presently  foundered.  The  first  and 
greatest  of  his  disasters  was  the  Life  of  Pope  Leo 
XIII.,  which  he  came  to  tell  me  of,  when  he  had  im 
agined  it,  in  a  sort  of  delirious  exultation.  He  had 
no  words  in  which  to  paint  the  magnificence  of  the 
project,  or  to  forecast  its  colossal  success.  It  would 
have  a  currency  bounded  only  by  the  number  of  Cath 
olics  in  Christendom.  It  would  be  translated  into  every 
language  which  was  anywhere  written  or  printed;  it 
would  be  circulated  literally  in  every  country  of  the 
globe,  and  Clemens's  book  agents  would  carry  the  pros 
pectuses  and  then  the  bound  copies  of  the  work  to  the 
ends  of  the  whole  earth.  ~Not  only  would  every  Catholic 
buy  it,  but  every  Catholic  must,  as  he  was  a  good  Cath 
olic,  as  he  hoped  to  be  saved.  It  was  a  magnificent 
scheme,  and  it  captivated  me,  as  it  had  captivated 
Clemens ;  it  dazzled  us  both,  and  neither  of  us  saw  the 
fatal  defect  in  it.  We  did  not  consider  how  often  Cath 
olics  could  not  read,  how  often  when  they  could,  they 
might  not  wish  to  read.  The  event  proved  that  whether 
they  could  read  or  not  the  immeasurable  majority  did 
not  wish  to  read  the  life  of  the  Pope,  though  it  was 

377 


LITE7UHY    FRIENDS    ANT)    ACQUAINTANCE 

written  by  a  dignitary  of  the  Church  and  issued  to  the 
world  with  every  sanction  from  the  Vatican.  The  fail 
ure  was  incredible  to  Clemens;  his  sanguine  soul  was 
utterly  confounded,  and  soon  a  silence  fell  upon  it 
where  it  had  been  so  exuberantly  jubilant. 


XIX 

THE  occasions  which  brought  us  to  3Tew  York  to 
gether  were  not  nearly  so  frequent  as  those  which 
united  us  in  Boston,  but  there  was  a  dinner  given  him 
by  a  friend  which  remains  memorable  from  the  fatuity 
of  two  men  present,  so  different  in  everything  but 
their  fatuity.  One  was  the  sweet  old  comedian 
Billy  Florence,  who  was  urging  the  unsuccessful 
dramatist  across  the  table  to  write  him  a  play  about 
Oliver  Cromwell,  and  giving  the  reasons  why  he 
thought  himself  peculiarly  fitted  to  portray  the  char 
acter  of  Cromwell.  The  other  was  a  modestly  millioned 
rich  man  who  was  then  only  beginning  to  amass  the 
moneys  afterward  heaped  so  high,  and  was  still  in  the 
condition  to  be  flattered  by  the  condescension  of  a  yet 
greater  millionaire.  His  contribution  to  our  gayety 
was  the  verbatim  report  of  a  call  he  had  made  upon 
William  II.  Vanderbilt,  whom  he  had  found  just  about 
starting  out  of  town,  with  his  trunks  actually  in  the 
front  hall,  but  who  had  stayed  to  receive  the  narrator. 
He  had,  in  fact,  sat  down  on  one  of  the  trunks,  and 
talked  with  the  easiest  friendliness,  and  quite,  we  were 
given  to  infer,  like  an  ordinary  human  being.  Clemens 
often  kept  on  with  some  thread  of  the  talk  when  we 
came  away  from  a  dinner,  but  now  he  was  silent,  as  if 
"  high  sorrowful  and  cloyed  " ;  and  it  was  not  till  well 
afterward  that  I  found  he  had  noted  the  facts  from  the 
bitterness  with  which  he  mocked  the  rich  man,  and  the 
pity  he  expressed  for  the  actor. 

379 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

He  had  begun  before  that  to  amass  those  evidences 
against  mankind  which  eventuated  with  him  in  his 
theory  of  what  he  called  "  the  damned  human  race." 
This  was  not  an  expression  of  piety,  but  of  the  kind 
contempt  to  which  he  was  driven  by  our  follies  and 
iniquities  as  he  had  observed  them  in  himself  as  well 
as  in  others.  It  was  as  mild  a  misanthropy,  probably, 
as  ever  caressed  the  objects  of  its  malediction.  But  I 
believe  it  was  about  the  year  1900  that  his  sense  of 
our  perdition  became  insupportable  and  broke  out  in 
a  mixed  abhorrence  and  amusement  which  spared  no 
occasion,  so  that  I  could  quite  understand  why  Mrs. 
Clemens  should  have  found  some  compensation,  when 
kept  to  her  room  by  sickness,  in  the  reflection  that  now 
she  should  not  hear  so  much  about  "  the  damned  human 
race."  He  told  of  that  with  the  same  wild  joy  that  he 
told  of  overhearing  her  repetition  of  one  of  his  most 
inclusive  profanities,  and  her  explanation  that  she 
meant  him  to  hear  it  so  that  he  might  know  how  it 
sounded.  The  contrast  of  the  lurid  blasphemy  with 
her  heavenly  whiteness  should  have  been  enough  to 
cure  any  one  less  grounded  than  he  in  what  must  be 
owned  was  as  fixed  a  habit  as  smoking  with  him.  When 
I  first  knew  him  he  rarely  vented  his  fury  in  that  sort, 
and  I  fancy  he  was  under  a  promise  to  her  which  he 
kept  sacred  till  the  wear  and  tear  of  his  nerves  with 
advancing  years  disabled  him.  Then  it  would  be  like 
him  to  struggle  with  himself  till  he  could  struggle  no 
longer  and  to  ask  his  promise  back,  and  it  would  be 
like  her  to  give  it  back.  His  profanity  was  the  heri 
tage  of  his  boyhood  and  3roung  manhood  in  social  con 
ditions  and  under  the  duress  of  exigencies  in  which 
everybody  swore  about  as  impersonally  as  he  smoked. 
It  is  best  to  recognize  the  fact  of  it,  and  I  do  so  the 
more  readily  because  I  cannot  suppose  the  Kecording 

380 


Angel  really  minded  it  much  more  than  that  Guardian 
Angel  of  his.  It  probably  grieved  them  about  equally, 
but  they  could  equally  forgive  it.  Nothing  came  of  his 
pose  regarding  u  the  damned  human  race  "  except  his 
invention  of  the  Human  Race  Luncheon  Club.  This 
was  confined  to  four  persons  who  were  never  all  got  to 
gether,  and  it  soon  perished  of  their  indifference. 

In  the  earlier  days  that  I  have  more  specially  in 
mind  one  of  the  questions  that  we  used  to  debate  a  good 
deal  was  whether  every  human  motive  was  not  selfish. 
We  inquired  as  to  every  impulse,  the  noblest,  the  holi 
est  in  effect,  and  he  found  them  in  the  last  analysis 
of  selfish  origin.  Pretty  nearly  the  whole  time  of  a 
certain  railroad  run  from  Xew  York  to  Hartford  was 
taken  up  with  the  scrutiny  of  the  self-sacrifice  of  a 
mother  for  her  child,  of  the  abandon  of  the  lover  who 
dies  in  saving  his  mistress  from  fire  or  flood,  of  the 
hero's  courage  in  the  field  and  the  martyr's  at  the  stake. 
Each  he  found  springing  from  the  unconscious  love  of 
self  and  the  dread  of  the  greater  pain  which  the  self- 
sacrificer  would  suffer  in  forbearing  the  sacrifice.  If 
we  had  any  time  left  from  this  inquiry  that  day,  he 
must  have  devoted  it  to  a  high  regret  that  Xapoleon 
did  not  carry  out  his  purpose  of  invading  England,  for 
then  he  would  have  destroyed  the  feudal  aristocracy,  or 
"  reformed  the  lords,"  as  it  might  be  called  now.  He 
thought  that  would  have  been  an  incalculable  blessing 
to  the  English  people  and  the  world.  Clemens  was 
always  beautifully  and  unfalteringly  a  republican. 
ISTone  of  his  occasional  misgivings  for  America  im 
plicated  a  return  to  monarchy.  Yet  he  felt  passion 
ately  the  splendor  of  the  English  monarchy,  and  there 
was  a  time  when  lie  gloried  in  that  figurative  poetry 
by  which  the  king  was  phrased  as  "  the  Majesty  of 
England."  He  rolled  the  words  deep-throatedly  out, 

381 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

and  exulted  in  their  beauty  as  if  it  were  beyond  any 
other  glory  of  the  world.  He  read,  or  read  at,  English 
history  a  great  deal,  and  one  of  the  by-products  of  his 
restless  invention  was  a  game  of  English  Kings  (like 
the  game  of  Authors)  for  children.  I  do  not  know 
whether  he  ever  perfected  this,  but  I  am  quite  sure  it 
was  not  put  upon  the  market.  Very  likely  he  brought 
it  to  a  practicable  stage,  and  then  tired  of  it,  as  he  was 
apt  to  do  in  the  ultimatum  of  his  vehement  under 
takings. 


XX 

HE  satisfied  the  impassioned  demand  of  his  nature 
for  incessant  activities  of  every  kind  by  taking  a  per 
sonal  as  well  as  a  pecuniary  interest  in  the  inventions 
of  others.  At  one  moment  "  the  damned  human  race  " 
was  almost  to  be  redeemed  by  a  process  of  founding 
brass  without  air  bubbles  in  it;  if  this  could  once  be 
accomplished,  as  I  understood,  or  misunderstood,  brass 
could  be  used  in  art-printing  to  a  degree  hitherto  im 
possible.  I  dare  say  I  have  got  it  wrong,  but  I  am  not 
mistaken  as  to  Clemens's  enthusiasm  for  the  process, 
and  his  heavy  losses  in  paying  its  way  to  ultimate  fail 
ure.  He  was  simultaneously  absorbed  in  the  perfection 
of  a  type-setting  machine,  which  he  was  paying  the 
inventor  a  salary  to  bring  to  a  perfection  so  expensive 
that  it  was  practically  impracticable.  We  were  both 
printers  by  trade,  and  I  could  take  the  same  interest 
in  this  wonderful  piece  of  mechanism  that  he  could; 
and  it  was  so  truly  wonderful  that  it  did  everything 
but  walk  and  talk.  Its  ingenious  creator  was  so  bent 
upon  realizing  the  highest  ideal  in  it  that  he  produced 
a  machine  of  quite  unimpeachable  efficiency.  But  it 
was  so  costly,  when  finished,  that  it  could  not  be  made 
for  less  than  twenty  thousand  dollars,  if  the  parts  were 
made  by  hand.  This  sum  was  prohibitive  of  its  intro 
duction,  unless  the  requisite  capital  could  be  found  for 
making  the  parts  by  machinery,  and  Clemens  spent 
many  months  in  vainly  trying  to  get  this  money  to- 

383  ^ 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

Aether.  In  the  mean  time  simpler  machines  had  been 
invented  and  the  market  filled,  and  his  investment  of 
three  hundred  thousand  dollars  in  the  beautiful  miracle 
remained  permanent  but  not  profitable.  I  once  went 
with  him  to  witness  its  performance,  and  it  did  seem 
to  me  the  last  word  in  its  way,  but  it  had  been  spoken 
too  exquisitely,  too  fastidiously.  I  never  heard  him 
devote  the  inventor  to  the  infernal  gods,  as  he  was  apt 
to  do  with  the  geniuses  he  lost  money  by,  and  so  I  think 
he  did  not  regard  him  as  a  traitor. 

In  these  things,  and  in  his  other  schemes  for  the 
siibiti  guadagni  of  the  speculator  and  the  "  sudden  mak 
ing  of  splendid  names "  for  the  benefactors  of  our 
species,  Clemens  satisfied  the  Colonel  Sellers  nature 
in  himself  (from  which  he  drew  the  picture  of  that 
wild  and  lovable  figure),  and  perhaps  made  as  good 
use  of  his  money  as  he  could.  lie  did  not  care  much 
for  money  in  itself,  but  he  luxuriated  in  the  lavish  use 
of  it,  and  he  was  as  generous  with  it  as  ever  a  man  was. 
He  liked  giving  it,  but  lie  commonly  wearied  of  giving 
it  himself,  and  wherever  he  lived  he  established  an 
almoner,  whom  he  fully  trusted  to  keep  his  left  hand 
ignorant  of  what  his  right  hand  was  doing.  I  believe 
he  felt  no  finality  in  charity,  but  did  it  because  in  its 
provisional  way  it  was  the  only  thing  a  man  could  do. 
I  never  heard  him  go  really  into  any  sociological  in 
quiry,  and  I  have  a  feeling  that  that  sort  of  thing 
baffled  and  dispirited  him.  No  one  can  read  The  Con 
necticut  Yankee,  and  not  be  aware  of  the  length  and 
breadth  of  his  sympathies  with  poverty,  but  apparently 
he  had  not  thought  out  any  scheme  for  righting  the 
economic  wrongs  we  abound  in.  I  cannot  remember 
our  ever  getting  quite  down  to  a  discussion  of  the  mat 
ter;  we  came  very  near  it  once  in  the  day  of  the  vast 
wave  of  emotion  sent  over  the  world  by  Looking  Back- 

384 


MY    MAKK    TWAIN 

ward,  and  again  when  we  were  all  so  troubled  by  the 
great  coal  strike  in  Pennsylvania ;  in  considering  that 
he  seemed  to  be  for  the  time  doubtful  of  the  justice 
of  the  working  -  man's  cause.  At  all  other  times  he 
seemed  to  know  that  whatever  wrongs  the  working- 
man  committed  work  was  always  in  the  right. 

When  Clemens  returned  to  America  with  his  fam 
ily,  after  lecturing  round  the  world,  I  again  saw  him 
in  New  York,  where  I  so  often  saw  him  while  he  was 
shaping  himself  for  that  heroic  enterprise.  He  would 
come  to  me,  and  talk  sorrowfully  over  his  financial 
ruin,  and  picture  it  to  himself  as  the  stuff  of  some 
unhappy  dream,  which,  after  long  prosperity,  had  cul 
minated  the  wrong  wray.  It  was  very  melancholy,  very 
touching,  but  the  sorrow  to  which  he  had  come  home 
from  his  long  journey  had  not  that  forlorn  bewilder 
ment  in  it.  He  was  looking  wonderfully  well,  and 
when  I  wanted  the  name  of  his  elixir,  he  said  it  was 
plasmon.  He  was  apt,  for  a  man  who  had  put  faith 
so  decidedly  away  from  him,  to  take  it  back  and  pin 
it  to  some  superstition,  usually  of  a  hygienic  sort. 
Once,  when  he  was  well  on  in  years,  he  came  to  Xew 
York  without  glasses,  and  announced  that  he  and  all 
his  family,  so  astigmatic  and  myopic  and  old-sighted, 
had,  so  to  speak,  burned  their  spectacles  behind  them 
upon  the  instruction  of  some  sage  who  had  found  out 
that  they  were  a  delusion.  The  next  time  he  came  he 
wore  spectacles  freely,  almost  ostentatiously,  and  I 
heard  from  others  that  the  whole  Clemens  family  had 
been  near  losing  their  eyesight  by  the  miracle  worked 
in  their  behalf.  !Nbw,  I  was  not  surprised  to  learn  that 
"  the  damned  human  race  "  was  to  be  saved  by  plasmon, 
if  anything,  and  that  my  first  duty  was  to  visit  the 
plasmon  agency  with  him,  and  procure  enough  plasmon 
to  secure  my  family  against  the  ills  it  was  heir  to  for 

385 


L1TEKAKY    JfKIEXDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

evermore.  I  did  not  immediately  understand  that  plas- 
mon  was  one  of  the  investments  which  he  had  made 
from  "  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for,"  and  in  the 
destiny  of  a  disastrous  disappointment.  But  after  pay 
ing  off  the  creditors  of  his  late  publishing  firm,  he  had 
to  do  something  with  his  money,  and  it  was  not  his 
fault  if  he  did  not  make  a  fortune  out  of  plasmou. 


XXI 

FOE  a  time  it  was  a  question  whether  he  should  not 
go  back  with  his  family  to  their  old  home  in  Hartford. 
Perhaps  the  father's  and  mother's  hearts  drew  them 
there  all  the  more  strongly  because  of  the  grief  written 
ineffaceably  over  it,  but  for  the  younger  ones  it  was  no 
longer  the  measure  of  the  world.  It  was  easier  for  all 
to  stay  on  indefinitely  in  Xew  York,  which  is  a  so 
journ  without  circumstance,  and  equally  the  home  of 
exile  and  of  indecision.  The  Clemenses  took  a  pleas 
ant,  spacious  house  at  Riverdale,  on  the  Hudson,  and 
there  I  began  to  see  them  again  on  something  like  the 
sweet  old  terms.  They  lived  far  more  unpretentiously 
than  they  used,  and  I  think  with  a  notion  of  economy, 
which  they  had  never  very  successfully  practised.  I 
recall  that  at  the  end  of  a  certain  year  in  Hartford, 
when  they  had  been  saving  and  paying  cash  for  every 
thing,  Clemens  wrote,  reminding  me  of  their  avowed 
experiment,  and  asking  me  to  guess  how  many  bills 
they  had  at  Xew  Year's ;  he  hastened  to  say  that  a 
horse-car  would  not  have  held  them.  At  Riverdale 
they  kept  no  carriage,  and  there  was  a  snowy  night 
when  I  drove  up  to  their  handsome  old  mansion  in 
the  station  carryall,  which  was  crusted  with  mud  as 
from  the  going  down  of  the  Deluge  after  transporting 
Xoah  and  his  family  from  the  Ark  to  whatever  point 
they  decided  to  settle  at  provisionally.  But  the  good 
talk,  the  rich  talk,  the  talk  that  could  never  suffer 


poverty  of  mind  or  soul,  was  there,  and  we  jubilantly- 
found  ourselves  again  in  our  middle  youth.  It  was 
the  mighty  moment  when  Clemens  was  building  his 
engines  of  war  for  the  destruction  of  Christian  Science, 
which  superstition  nobody,  and  he  least  of  all,  expect 
ed  to  destroy.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  say  whether 
in  his  talk  of  it  his  disgust  for  the  illiterate  twaddle 
of  Mrs.  Eddy's  book,  or  his  admiration  of  her  genius 
for  organization  was  the  greater.  He  believed  that  as 
a  religious  machine  the  Christian  Science  Church  was 
as  perfect  as  the  Roman  Church  and  destined  to  be 
more  formidable  in  its  control  of  the  minds  of  men. 
Ho  looked  for  its  spread  over  the  whole  of  Christen 
dom,  and  throughout  the  winter  he  spent  at  Riverdale 
he  was  ready  to  meet  all  listeners  more  than  half-way 
with  his  convictions  of  its  powerful  grasp  of  the  aver 
age  human  desire  to  get  something  for  nothing.  The 
vacuous  vulgarity  of  its  texts  was  a  perpetual  joy  to 
him,  while  he  bowed  with  serious  respect  to  the  sagacity 
which  built  so  securely  upon  the  everlasting  rock  of 
human  credulity  and  folly. 

An  interesting  phase  of  his  psychology  in  this  busi 
ness  was  not  only  his  admiration  for  the  masterly 
policy  of  the  Christian  Science  hierarchy,  but  his 
willingness  to  allow  the  miracles  of  its  healers  to  be 
tried  on  his  friends  and  family,  if  they  wished  it.  He 
had  a  tender  heart  for  the  whole  generation  of  em 
pirics,  as  well  as  the  newer  sorts  of  scientitians,  but 
he  seemed  to  base  his  faith  in  them  largely  upon  the 
failure  of  the  regulars  rather  than  upon  their  own  suc 
cesses,  which  also  he  believed  in.  He  was  recurrently, 
but  not  insistently,  desirous  that  you  should  try  their 
strange  magics  when  you  were  going  to  try  the  familiar 
medicines. 


XXII 

THE  order  of  my  acquaintance,  or  call  it  intimacy, 
with  Clemens  was  this:  our  first  meeting  in  Boston, 
iny  visits  to  him  in  Hartford,  his  visits  to  me  in  Cam 
bridge,  in  Belmont,  and  in  Boston,  our  briefer  and  less 
frequent  meetings  in  Paris  and  ISTew  York,  all  with 
repeated  interruptions  through  my  absences  in  Europe, 
and  his  sojourns  in  London,  Berlin,  Vienna,  and  Flor 
ence,  and  his  flights  to  the  many  ends,  and  odds  and 
ends,  of  the  earth.  I  will  not  try  to  follow  the  events, 
if  they  were  not  rather  the  subjective  experiences,  of 
those  different  periods  and  points  of  time  which  I  must 
not  fail  to  make  include  his  summer  at  York  Harbor, 
and  his  divers  residences  in  K"ew  York,  on  Tenth  Street 
and  on  Fifth  Avenue,  at  Riverdale,  and  at  Stormfield, 
which  his  daughter  has  told  me  he  loved  best  of  all  his 
houses  and  hoped  to  make  his  home  for  long  years. 

Xot  much  remains  to  me  of  the  week  or  so  that  we 
had  together  in  Paris  early  in  the  summer  of  1904. 
The  first  thing  I  got  at  my  bankers  was  a  cable  message 
announcing  that  my  father  was  stricken  with  paralysis, 
but  urging  my  stay  for  further  intelligence,  and  I  went 
about,  till  the  final  summons  came,  with  my  head  in  a 
mist  of  care  and  dread.  Clemens  was  very  kind  and 
brotherly  through  it  all.  He  was  living  greatly  to  his 
mind  in  one  of  those  arcaded  little  hotels  in  the  Rue 
de  Rivoli,  and  he  was  free  from  all  household  duties 
to  range  with  me.  We  drove  together  to  make  calls 

389 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

of  digestion  at  many  houses  where  he  had  got  indiges 
tion  through  his  reluctance  from  their  hospitality,  for 
he  hated  dining  out.  But,  as  he  explained,  his  wife 
wanted  him  to  make  these  visits,  and  he  did  it,  as  he 
did  everything  she  wanted.  At  one  place,  some  sub 
urban  villa,  he  could  get  no  answer  to  his  ring,  and 
he  "  hove  "  his  cards  over  the  gate  just  as  it  opened, 
and  he  had  the  shame  of  explaining  in  his  uriexplan- 
atory  French  to  the  man  picking  them  up.  He  was 
excruciatingly  helpless  with  his  cabmen,  but  by  very 
cordially  smiling  and  casting  himself  on  the  drivers' 
mercy  he  always  managed  to  get  where  he  wanted. 
The  family  was  on  the  verge  of  their  many  moves, 
and  he  was  doing  some  small  errands ;  he  said  that  the 
others  did  the  main  things,  and  left  him  to  do  what  the 
cat  might. 

It  was  with  that  return  upon  the  buoyant  billow  of 
plasmon,  renewed  in  look  and  limb,  that  Clemens's  uni 
versally  pervasive  popularity  began  in  his  own  country. 
He  had  hitherto  been  more  intelligently  accepted  or 
more  largely  imagined  in  Europe,  and  I  suppose  it 
was  my  sense  of  this  that  inspired  the  stupidity  of  my 
saying  to  him  when  we  came  to  consider  "  the  state  of 
polite  learning  "  among  us,  "  You  mustn't  expect  peo 
ple  to  keep  it  up  here  as  they  do  in  England."  But 
it  appeared  that  his  countrymen  were  only  wanting  the 
chance,  and  they  kept  it  up  in  honor  of  him  past  all 
precedent.  One  does  not  go  into  a  catalogue  of  dinners, 
receptions,  meetings,  speeches,  and  the  like,  when  there 
are  more  vital  things  to  speak  of.  He  loved  these  ob 
vious  joys,  and  he  eagerly  strove  with  the  occasions 
they  gave  him  for  the  brilliancy  which  seemed  so  ex- 
laustless  and  was  so  exhausting.  His  friends  saw  that 
lie  was  wearing  himself  out,  and  it  was  not  because  of 
Mrs.  Clemens's  health  alone  that  they  were  glad  to  have 

390 


MY    MAEK    TWAIN 

him  take  refuge  at  Riverdale.  The  family  lived  there 
two  happy,  hopeless  years,  and  then  it  was  ordered  that 
they  should  change  for  his  wife's  sake  to  some  less 
exacting  climate.  Clemens  was  not  eager  to  go  to  Flor 
ence,  but  his  imagination  was  taken  as  it  would  have 
been  in  the  old-young  days  by  the  notion  of  packing 
his  furniture  into  flexible  steel  cages  from  his  house 
in  Hartford  and  unpacking  it  from  them  untouched 
at  his  villa  in  Fiesole.  He  got  what  pleasure  any  man 
could  out  of  that  triumph  of  mind  over  matter,  but  the 
shadow  was  creeping  up  his  life.  One  sunny  afternoon 
we  sat  on  the  grass  before  the  mansion,  after  his  wife 
had  begun  to  get  well  enough  for  removal,  and  we 
looked  up  toward  a  balcony  where  by-and-by  that  lovely 
presence  made  itself  visible,  as  if  it  had  stooped  there 
from  a  cloud.  A  hand  frailly  waved  a  handkerchief; 
Clemens  ran  over  the  lawn  toward  it,  calling  tenderly: 
"  What  ?  What  ?"  as  if  it  might  be  an  asking  for  him 
instead  of  the  greeting  it  really  was  for  me.  It  was 
the  last  time  I  saw  her,  if  indeed  I  can  be  said  to  have 
seen  her  then,  and  long  afterward  when  I  said  how 
beautiful  we  all  thought  her,  how  good,  how  wise,  how 
wonderfully  perfect  in  every  relation  of  life,  he  cried 
out  in  a  breaking  voice:  "Oh,  why  didn't  you  ever 
tell  her  ?  She  thought  you  didn't  like  her."  What  a 
pang  it  was  then  not  to  have  told  her,  but  how  could  we 
have  told  her  ?  His  unreason  endeared  him  to  me  more 
than  all  his  wisdom. 

To  that  Riverdale  sojourn  belong  my  impressions  of 
his  most  violent  anti-Christian  Science  rages,  which 
began  with  the  postponement  of  his  book,  and  softened 
into  acceptance  of  the  delay  till  he  had  well-nigh  for 
gotten  his  wrath  when  it  come  out.  There  was  also 
one  of  those  joint  episodes  of  ours,  which,  strangely 
enough,  did  not  eventuate  in  entire  failure,  as  most  of 

391 


LITEEAEY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

our  joint  episodes  did.  He  wrote  furiously  to  me  of 
a  wrong  which  had  been  done  to  one  of  the  most  help 
less  and  one  of  the  most  helped  of  our  literary  brethren, 
asking  me  to  join  with  him  in  recovering  the  money 
paid  over  by  that  brother's  publisher  to  a  false  friend 
who  had  withheld  it  and  would  not  give  any  account 
of  it.  Our  hapless  brother  had  appealed  to  Clemens, 
as  he  had  to  me,  with  the  facts,  but  not  asking  our  help, 
probably  because  he  knew  he  need  not  ask;  and  Clem 
ens  enclosed  to  me  a  very  taking-by-the-throat  message 
which  he  proposed  sending  to  the  false  friend.  For 
once  I  had  some  sense,  and  answered  that  this  would 
never  do,  for  we  had  really  no  power  in  the  matter,  and 
I  contrived  a  letter  to  the  recreant  so  softly  diplo 
matic  that  I  shall  always  think  of  it  with  pride  when 
my  honesties  no  longer  give  me  satisfaction,  saying 
that  this  incident  had  come  to  our  knowledge,  and  sug 
gesting  that  we  felt  sure  he  would  not  finally  wish  to 
withhold  the  money.  jSTothiug  more,  practically,  than 
that,  but  that  was  enough;  there  came  promptly  back 
a  letter  of  justification,  covering  a  very  substantial 
check,  which  we  hilariously  forwarded  to  our  bene 
ficiary.  But  the  helpless  man  who  was  so  used  to  be 
ing  helped  did  not  answer  with  the  gladness  I,  at  least, 
expected  of  him.  He  acknowledged  the  check  as  he 
would  any  ordinary  payment,  and  then  he  made  us 
observe  that  there  was  still  a  large  sum  due  him  out 
of  the  moneys  withheld.  At  this  point  I  proposed  to 
Clemens  that  we  should  let  the  nonchalant  victim  col 
lect  the  remnant  himself.  Clouds  of  sorrow  had  gath 
ered  about  the  bowed  head  of  the  delinquent  since  we 
began  on  him,  and  my  fickle  sympathies  were  turning 
his  way  from  the  victim  who  was  really  to  blame  for 
leaving  his  affairs  so  unguardedly  to  him  in  the  first 
place.  Clemens  made  some  sort  of  grim  assent,  and  we 

392 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

dropped  the  matter.  He  was  more  used  to  ingratitude 
from  those  he  helped  than  I  was,  who  found  being  lain 
down  upon  not  so  amusing  as  he  found  my  revolt.  He 
reckoned  I  was  right,  he  said,  and  after  that  I  think 
we  never  recurred  to  the  incident.  It  was  not  ingrati 
tude  that  he  ever  minded;  it;  was  treachery  that  really 
maddened  him  past  forgiveness. 


xxin 

DURING  the  summer  he  spent  at  York  Harbor  I  was 
only  forty  minutes  away  at  Kittery  Point,  and  we  saw 
each  other  often;  but  this  was  before  the  last  time  at 
Riverdale.  He  had  a  wide,  low  cottage  in  a  pine  grove 
overlooking  York  River,  and  we  used  to  sit  at  a  corner 
of  the  veranda  farthest  away  from  Mrs.  Clemens's  win 
dow,  where  we  could  read  our  manuscripts  to  each 
other,  and  tell  our  stories,  and  laugh  our  hearts  out 
without  disturbing  her.  At  first  she  had  been  about 
the  house,  and  there  was  one  gentle  afternoon  when 
she  made  tea  for  us  in  the  parlor,  but  that  was  the  last 
time  I  spoke  with  her.  After  that  it  was  really  a  ques 
tion  of  how  soonest  and  easiest  she  could  be  got  back 
to  Riverdale ;  but,  of  course,  there  were  specious  delays 
in  which  she  seemed  no  worse  and  seemed  a  little  better, 
and  Clemens  could  work  at  a  novel  he  had  begun.  He 
had  taken  a  room  in  the  house  of  a  friend  and  neigh 
bor,  a  fisherman  and  boatman ;  there  was  a  table  where 
he  could  write,  and  a  bed  where  he  could  lie  down  and 
read ;  and  there,  unless  my  memory  has  played  me  one 
of  those  constructive  tricks  that  people's  memories  in 
dulge  in,  he  read  me  the  first  chapters  of  an  admirable 
story.  The  scene  was  laid  in  a  Missouri  town,  and 
the  characters  such  as  he  had  known  in  boyhood;  but 
as  often  as  I  tried  to  make  him  own  it,  he  denied  hav 
ing  written  any  such  story;  it  is  possible  that  I  dreamed 
it,  but  I  hope  the  MS.  will  yet  be  found.  Upon  re- 

394 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

flection  I  cannot  believe  that  I  dreamed  it,  and  I  cannot 
believe  that  it  was  an  effect  of  that  sort  of  pseudo- 
mnemonics  which  I  have  mentioned.  The  characters 
in  the  novel  are  too  clearly  outlined  in  my  recollection, 
together  with  some  critical  reservations  of  my  own  con 
cerning  them.  Kot  only  does  he  seem  to  have  read  me 
those  first  chapters,  but  to  have  talked  them  over  with 
me  and  outlined  the  whole  story. 

I  cannot  say  whether  or  not  he  believed  that  his  wife 
would  recover;  he  fought  the  fear  of  her  death  to  the 
end;  for  her  life  was  far  more  largely  his  than  the 
lives  of  most  men's  wives  arc  theirs.  For  his  own  life 
I  believe  he  would  never  have  much  cared,  if  I  may 
trust  a  saying  of  one  who  was  so  absolutely  without 
pose  as  he  was.  He  said  that  he  never  saw  a  dead  man 
whom  he  did  not  envy  for  having  had  it  over  and  being- 
done  with  it.  Life  had  always  amused  him,  and  in  the 
resurgence  of  its  interests  after  his  sorrow  had  ebbed 
away  he  was  again  deeply  interested  in  the  world  and 
in  the  human  race,  which,  though  damned,  abounded 
in  subjects  of  curious  inquiry.  When  the  time  came 
for  his  wife's  removal  from  York  Harbor  I  went  with 
him  to  Boston,  Avhere  he  wished  to  look  up  the  best 
means  of  her  conveyance  to  Xew  York.  The  inquiry 
absorbed  him :  the  sort  of  invalid  -  car  he  could  get ; 
how  she  could  be  carried  to  the  village  station;  how 
the  car  could  be  detached  from  the  eastern  train  at 
Boston  and  carried  round  to  the  southern  train  on  the 
other  side  of  the  city,  and  then  how  it  could  be  attached 
to  the  Hudson  River  train  at  ISTew  York  and  left  at 
Riverdale.  There  was  no  particular  of  the  business 
which  he  did  not  scrutinize  and  master,  not  only  with 
his  poignant  concern  for  her  welfare,  but  with  his 
strong  curiosity  as  to  how  these  unusual  things  were 
done  with  the  usual  means.  With  the  inertness  that 

395 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

grows  upon  an  aging  man  he  had  been  used  to  dele 
gating  more  and  more  things,  but  of  that  thing  I  per 
ceived  that  he  would  not  delegate  the  least  detail. 

He  had  meant  never  to  go  abroad  again,  but  when 
it  came  time  to  go  he  did  not  look  forward  to  return 
ing;  he  expected  to  live  in  Florence  always  after  that; 
they  were  used  to  the  life  and  they  had  been  happy 
there  some  years  earlier  before  he  went  with  his  wife 
for  the  cure  of  ISTauheim.  But  when  he  came  home 
again  it  was  for  good  and  all.  It  was  natural  that  he 
should  wish  to  live  in  New  York,  where  they  had  al 
ready  had  a  pleasant  year  in  Tenth  Street.  I  used  to 
see  him  there  in  an  upper  room,  looking  south  over  a 
quiet  open  space  of  back  yards  where  wye  fought  our 
battles  in  behalf  of  the  Filipinos  and  the  Boers,  and  he 
carried  on  his  campaign  against  the  missionaries  in 
China.  He  had  not  yet  formed  his  habit  of  lying  for 
whole  days  in  bed  and  reading  and  writing  there,  yet 
he  was  a  good  deal  in  bed,  from  weakness,  I  suppose, 
and  for  the  mere  comfort  of  it. 

My  perspectives  are  not  very  clear,  and  in  the  fore 
shortening  of  events  which  always  takes  place  in  our 
review  of  the  past  I  may  not  always  time  things  aright. 
But  I  believe  it  was  not  until  he  had  taken  his  house 
at  21  Fifth  Avenue  that  he  began  to  talk  to  me  of 
writing  his  autobiography.  He  meant  that  it  should 
be  a  perfectly  veracious  record  of  his  life  and  period; 
for  the  first  time  in  literature  there  should  be  a  true 
history  of  a  man  and  a  true  presentation  of  the  men 
the  man  had  known.  As  we  talked  it  over  the  scheme 
enlarged  itself  in  oiTr  riotous  fancy.  We  said  it  should 
be  not  only  a  book,  it  should  be  a  library,  not  only  a 
library,  but  a  literature.  It  should  make  good  the 
world's  loss  through  Omar's  barbarity  at  Alexandria; 
there  was  no  image  so  grotesque,  so  extravagant  that 

396 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

we  did  not  play  with  it;  and  the  work  so  far  as  he 
carried  it  was  really  done  on  a  colossal  scale.  But  one 
day  he  said  that  as  to  veracity  it  was  a  failure ;  he  had 
begun  to  lie,  and  that  if  no  man  ever  yet  told  the  truth 
about  himself  it  was  because  no  man  ever  could.  How 
far  he  had  carried  his  autobiography  I  cannot  say;  he 
dictated  the  matter  several  hours  each  day;  and  the 
public  has  already  seen  long  passages  from  it,  and  can 
judge,  probably,  of  the  make  and  matter  of  the  whole 
from  these.  It  is  immensely  inclusive,  and  it  observes 
no  order  or  sequence.  Whether  now,  after  his  death,  it 
will  be  published  soon  or  late  I  have  no  means  of  know 
ing.  Once  or  twice  he  said  in  a  vague  way  that  it  was 
not  to  be  published  for  twenty  years,  so  that  the  dis 
comfort  of  publicity  might  be  minimized  for  all  the 
survivors.  Suddenly  he  told  me  he  was  not  working  at 
it;  but  I  did  not  understand  whether  he  had  finished 
it  or  merely  dropped  it ;  I  never  asked. 

We  lived  in  the  same  city,  but  for  old  men  rather 
far  apart,  he  at  Tenth  Street  and  I  at  Seventieth,  and 
with  our  colds  and  other  disabilities  we  did  not  see 
each  other  often.  He  expected  me  to  come  to  him,  and 
I  would  not  without  some  return  of  my  visits,  but  we 
never  ceased  to  be  friends,  and  good  friends,  so  far  as 
I  know.  I  joked  him  once  as  to  how  I  was  going  to 
come  out  in  his  autobiography,  and  he  gave  me  some 
sort  of  joking  reassurance.  There  was  one  incident, 
however,  that  brought  us  very  frequently  and  actively 
together.  He  came  one  Sunday  afternoon  to  have  me 
call  with  him  on  Maxim  Gorky,  who  was  staying  at 
a  hotel  a  few  streets  above  mine.  We  were  both  inter 
ested  in  Gorky,  Clemens  rather  more  as  a  revolutionist 
and  I  as  a  realist,  though  I  too  wished  the  Russian 
Tsar  ill,  and  the  novelist  well  in  his  mission  to  the 
Russian  sympathizers  in  this  republic.  But  I  had  lived 

397 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

through  the  episode  of  Kossuth's  visit  to  us  and  his 
vain  endeavor  to  raise  funds  for  the  Hungarian  cause 
in  1851,  when  we  were  a  younger  and  nobler  nation 
than  now,  with  hearts  if  not  hands  opener  to  the  "  op 
pressed  of  Europe  " ;  the  oppressed  of  America,  the 
four  or  five  millions  of  slaves,  we  did  not  count.  I 
did  not  believe  that  Gorky  could  get  the  money  for  the 
cause  of  freedom  in  Russia  which  he  had  come  to  get ; 
as  I  told  a  valued  friend  of  his  and  mine,  I  did  not 
believe  he  could  get  twenty-five  hundred  dollars,  and 
I  think  now  I  set  the  figure  too  high.  I  had  already 
refused  to  sign  the  sort  of  general  appeal  his  friends 
were  making  to  our  principles  and  pockets  because  I 
felt  it  so  wholly  idle,  and  when  the  paper  was  produced 
in  Gorky's  presence  and  Clemens  put  his  name  to  it 
I  still  refused.  The  next  day  Gorky  was  expelled  from 
his  hotel  with  the  woman  who  was  not  his  wife,  but 
who,  I  am  bound  to  say,  did  not  look  as  if  she  were 
not,  at  least  to  me,  who  am,  however,  not  versed  in 
those  aspects  of  human  nature. 

I  might  have  escaped  unnoted,  but  Clemens's  fa 
miliar  head  gave  us  away  to  the  reporters  waiting  at 
the  elevator's  mouth  for  all  who  went  to  see  Gorky. 
As  it  was,  a  hunt  of  interviewers  ensued  for  us  sev 
erally  and  jointly.  I  could  remain  aloof  in  my  hotel 
apartment,  returning  answer  to  such  guardians  of  the 
public  right  to  know  everything  that  I  had  nothing  to 
say  of  Gorky's  domestic  affairs;  for  the  public  in 
terest  had  now  strayed  far  from  the  revolution,  and 
centred  entirely  upon  these.  But  with  Clemens  it  was 
different;  he  lived  in  a  house  with  a  street  door  kept 
by  a  single  butler,  and  he  was  constantly  rung  for.  I 
forget  how  long  the  siege  lasted,  but  long  enough  for 
us  to  have  fun  with  it.  That  was  the  moment  of  the 
great  Vesuvian  eruption,  and  we  figured  ourselves  in 

398 


MY    AIAKK    TWAIN 

easy  reach  of  a  volcano  which  was  every  now  and  then 
"  blowing  a  cone  off,"  as  the  telegraphic  phrase  was. 
The  roof  of  the  great  market  in  Naples  had  just  broken 
in  under  its  load  of  ashes  and  cinders,  and  crushed 
hundreds  of  people ;  and  we  asked  each  other  if  we  were 
not  sorry  we  had  not  been  there,  where  the  pressure 
would  have  been  far  less  terrific  than  it  was  with  us 
in  Fifth  Avenue.  The  forbidden  butler  came  up  with 
a  message  that  there  were  some  gentlemen  below  who 
wanted  to  see  Clemens. 

"  How  many  ?"  he  demanded. 

"  Five,"  the  butler  faltered. 

"  Reporters  2" 

The  butler  feigned  uncertainty. 

"  What  would  you  do  ?"  he  asked  me. 

"  I  wouldn't  see  them,"  I  said,  and  then  Clemens 
went  directly  down  to  them.  How  or  by  what  means 
he  appeased  their  voracity  I  cannot  say,  but  I  fancy 
it  was  by  the  confession  of  the  exact  truth,  which  was 
harmless  enough.  They  went  away  joyfully,  and  he 
came  back  in  radiant  satisfaction  with  having  seen 
them.  Of  course  he  was  right  and  I  wrong,  and  he 
was  right  as  to  the  point  at  issue  between  Gorky  and 
those  who  had  helplessly  treated  him  with  such  cruel 
ignominy.  In  America  it  is  not  the  convention  for 
men  to  live  openly  in  hotels  with  women  who  are  not 
their  wives.  Gorky  had  violated  this  convention  and 
he  had  to  pay  the  penalty ;  and  concerning  the  destruc 
tion  of  his  efficiency  as  an  emissary  of  the  revolution, 
his  blunder  was  worse  than  a  crime. 


XXIV 

To  the  period  of  Cleniens's  residence  in  Fifth  Ave 
nue  belongs  his  efflorescence  in  white  serge.  He  was 
always  rather  aggressively  indifferent  about  dress,  and 
at  a  very  early  date  in  our  acquaintance  Aldrich  and 
I  attempted  his  reform,  by  clubbing  to  buy  him  a  cravat. 
But  he  would  not  put  away  his  stiff  little  black  bow, 
and  until  he  imagined  the  suit  of  white  serge,  he  wore 
always  a  suit  of  black  serge,  truly  deplorable  in  the  cut 
of  the  sagging  frock.  After  his  measure  had  once  been 
taken  he  refused  to  make  his  clothes  the  occasion  of 
personal  interviews  with  his  tailor;  he  sent  the  stuff 
by  the  kind  elderly  woman  who  had  been  in  the  service 
of  the  family  from  the  earliest  days  of  his  marriage, 
and  accepted  the  result  without  criticism.  But  the 
white  serge  was  an  inspiration  which  few  men  would 
have  had  the  courage  to  act  upon.  The  first  time  I 
saw  him  wear  it  was  at  the  authors'  hearing  before  the 
Congressional  Committee  on  Copyright  in  Washington. 
Nothing  could  have  been  more  dramatic  than  the  gest 
ure  with  which  he  flung  off  his  long  loose  overcoat,  and 
stood  forth  in  white  from  his  feet  to  the  crown  of  his 
silvery  head.  It  was  a  magnificent  coup,  and  he  dearly 
loved  a  coup;  but  the  magnificent  speech  which  he 
made,  tearing  to  shreds  the  venerable  farrago  of  non 
sense  about  non-property  in  ideas  which  had  formed 
the  basis  of  all  copyright  legislation,  made  you  forget 
even  his  spectacularity. 

400 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

It  is  well  known  how  proud  lie  was  of  his  Oxford 
gown,  not  merely  because  it  symbolized  the  honor  in 
which  he  was  held  by  the  highest  literary  body  in  the 
world,  but  because  it  was  so  rich  and  so  beautiful.  The 
red  and  the  lavender  of  the  cloth  flattered  his  eyes  as 
the  silken  black  of  the  same  degree  of  Doctor  of  Letters, 
given  him  years  before  at  Yale,  could  not  do.  His 
frank,  defiant  happiness  in  it,  mixed  with  a  due  sense 
of  burlesque,  was  something  that  those  lacking  his  poet- 
soul  could  never  imagine ;  they  accounted  it  vain,  weak ; 
but  that  would  not  have  mattered  to  him  if  he  had 
known  it.  In  his  London  sojourn  he  had  formed  the 
top-hat  habit,  and  for  a  while  he  lounged  splendidly 
up  and  down  Fifth  Avenue  in  that  society  emblem; 
but  he  seemed  to  tire  of  it,  and  to  return  kindly  to 
the  soft  hat  of  his  Southwestern  tradition. 

He  disliked  clubs ;  I  don't  know  whether  he  belonged 
to  any  in  New  York,  but  I  never  met  him  in  one.  As 
I  have  told,  he  himself  had  formed  the  Human  Race 
Club,  but  as  he  never  could  get  it  together  it  hardly 
counted.  There  was  to  have  been  a  meeting  of  it  the 
time  of  my  only  visit  to  Stormfield  in  April  of  last 
year ;  but  of  three  who  were  to  have  come  I  alone  came. 
We  got  on  very  well  without  the  absentees,  after  find 
ing  them  in  the  wrrong,  as  usual,  and  the  visit  was  like 
those  I  used  to  have  with  him  so  many  years  before  in 
Hartford,  but  there  was  not  the  old  ferment  of  subjects. 
Many  things  had  been  discussed  and  put  away  for 
good,  but  we  had  our  old  fondness  for  nature  and  for 
each  other,  who  wrere  so  differently  parts  of  it.  He 
showed  his  absolute  content  with  his  house,  and  that 
was  the  greater  pleasure  for  me  because  it  was  my 
son  who  designed  it.  The  architect  had  been  so  fort 
unate  as  to  be  able  to  plan  it  where  a  natural  avenue 
of  savins,  the  close-knit,  slender,  cvpress-like  cedars  of 

401 


L1TEEAKY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

New  England,  led  away  from  tbe  rear  of  the  villa  to 
the  little  level  of  a  pergola,  meant  some  day  to  be 
wreathed  and  roofed  with  vines.  But  in  the  early 
spring  days  all  the  landscape  was  in  the  beautiful 
nakedness  of  the  northern  winter.  It  opened  in  the 
surpassing  loveliness  of  wooded  and  meadowed  uplands, 
under  skies  that  were  the  first  days  blue,  and  the  last 
gray  over  a  rainy  and  then  a  snowy  floor.  We  walked 
up  and  down,  up  and  down,  between  the  villa  terrace 
and  the  pergola,  and  talked  with  the  melancholy  amuse 
ment,  the  sad  tolerance  of  age  for  the  sort  of  men  and 
things  that  used  to  excite  us  or  enrage  us ;  now  we  were 
far  past  turbulence  or  anger.  Once  we  took  a  walk 
together  across  the  yellow  pastures  to  a  chasmal  creek 
on  his  grounds,  where  the  ice  still  knit  the  clayey 
banks  together  like  crystal  mosses;  and  the  stream  far 
down  clashed  through  and  over  the  stones  and  the 
shards  of  ice.  Clemens  pointed  out  the  scenery  he 
had  bought  to  give  himself  elbow-room,  and  showed 
me  the  lot  he  was  going  to  have  me  build  on.  The 
next  day  we  came  again  with  the  geologist  he  had 
asked  up  to  Stormfield  to  analyze  its  rocks.  Truly 
he  loved  the  place,  though  he  had  been  so  weary  of 
change  and  so  indifferent  to  it  that  he  never  saw  it 
till  he  came  to  live  in  it.  He  left  it  all  to  the  archi 
tect  whom  he  had  known  from  a  child  in  the  intimacy 
which  bound  our  families  together,  though  we  bodily 
lived  far  enough  apart.  I  loved  his  little  ones  and  he 
was  sweet  to  mine  and  was  their  delighted-in  and  won- 
dered-at  friend.  Once  and  once  again,  and  yet  again 
and  again,  the  black  shadow  that  shall  never  be  lifted 
where  it  falls,  fell  in  his  house  and  in  mine,  during 
the  forty  years  and  more  that  we  were  friends,  and  en 
deared  us  the  more  to  each  other. 


XXV 

MY  visit  at  Stormfield  came  to  an  end  with  tender 
relucting  on  his  part  and  on  mine.  Every  morning 
before  I  dressed  I  heard  him  sounding  my  name 
through  the  house  for  the  fun  of  it  and  I  know  for 
the  fondness;  and  if  I  looked  out  of  my  door,  there 
he  was  in  his  long  nightgown  swaying  up  and  down 
the  corridor,  and  wagging  his  great  white  head  like  a 
boy  that  leaves  his  bed  and  comes  out  in  the  hope  of 
frolic  with  some  one.  The  last  morning  a  soft  sugar- 
snow  had  fallen  and  was  falling,  and  I  drove  through 
it  down  to  the  station  in  the  carriage  which  had  been 
given  him  by  his  wife's  father  when  they  were  first 
married,  and  been  kept  all  those  intervening  years  in 
honorable  retirement  for  this  final  use.  Its  springs 
had  not  grown  yielding  with  time;  it  had  rather  the 
stiffness  and  severity  of  age ;  but  for  him  it  must  have 
swung  low  like  the  sweet  chariot  of  the  negro  "  spirit 
ual  "  which  I  heard  him  sing  with  such  fervor,  when 
those  wonderful  hymns  of  the  slaves  began  to  make 
their  way  northward.  Go  Down,  Daniel,  was  one  in 
which  I  can  hear  his  quavering  tenor  now.  He  was  a 
lover  of  the  things  he  liked,  and  full  of  a  passion  for 
them  which  satisfied  itself  in  reading  them  matchlessly 
aloud.  !No  one  could  read  Uncle  Remus  like  him ;  his 
voice  echoed  the  voices  of  the  negro  nurses  who  told 
his  childhood  the  wonderful  tales.  I  remember  es 
pecially  his  rapture  with  Mr.  Cable's  Old  Creole  Days, 

27  403 


LITERARY    FRIENDS    AND    ACQUAINTANCE 

and  the  thrilling  force  with  which  he  gave  the  forbid 
ding  of  the  leper's  brother  when  the  city's  survey  ran 
the  course  of  an  avenue  through  the  cottage  where  the 
leper  lived  in  hiding:  "  Strit  must  not  pass!" 

Out  of  a  nature  rich  and  fertile  beyond  any  I  have 
known,  the  material  given  him  by  the  Mystery  that 
makes  a  man  and  then  leaves  him  to  make  himself 
over,  he  wrought  a  character  of  high  nobility  upon  a 
foundation  of  clear  and  solid  truth.  At  the  last  day 
he  will  not  have  to  confess  anything,  for  all  his  life 
was  the  free  knowledge  of  any  one  who  would  ask  him 
of  it.  The  Searcher  of  hearts  will  not  bring  him  to 
shame  at  that  day,  for  he  did  not  try  to  hide  any  of 
the  things  for  which  he  was  often  so  bitterly  sorry. 
He  knew  where  the  Eesponsibility  lay,  and  he  took  a 
man's  share  of  it  bravely;  but  not  the  less  fearlessly 
he  left  the  rest  of  the  answer  to  the  God  who  had  im 
agined  men. 

It  is  in  vain  that  I  try  to  give  a  notion  of  the 
intensity  with  which  he  pierced  to  the  heart  of  life, 
and  the  breadth  of  vision  with  which  he  compassed  the 
whole  world,  and  tried  for  the  reason  of  things,  and 
then  left  trying.  We  had  other  meetings,  insignifi 
cantly  sad  and  brief ;  but  the  last  time  I  saw  him  alive 
was  made  memorable  to  me  by  the  kind,  clear  judicial 
sense  with  which  he  explained  and  justified  the  labor- 
unions  as  the  sole  present  help  of  the  weak  against  the 
strong. 

Next  I  saw  him  dead,  lying  in  his  coffin  amid  those 
flowers  with  which  we  garland  our  despair  in  that  piti 
less  hour.  After  the  voice  of  his  old  friend  Twichell 
had  been  lifted  in  the  prayer  which  it  wailed  through 
in  broken-hearted  supplication,  I  looked  a  moment  at 
the ^ face  I  knew  so  well;  and  it  was  patient  with  the 
patience  I  had  so  often  seen  in  it :  something  of  puzzle, 

404 


MY    MARK    TWAIN 

a  great  silent  dignity,  an  assent  to  what  must  be  from 
the  depths  of  a  nature  whose  tragical  seriousness  broke 
in  the  laughter  which  the  unwise  took  for  the  whole  of 
him.  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes — I  knew 
them  all  and  all  the  rest  of  our  sages,  poets,  seers, 
critics,  humorists;  they  were  like  one  another  and  like 
other  literary  men;  but  Clemens  was  sole,  incompar 
able,  the  Lincoln  of  our  literature. 


INDEX 


AOASSTZ,  JEAN  Loria  Anot.PtiK, 
102,  181,  184,  186,  201,  219, 
209-272,  291. 

Akers,  Elizabeth,  22.5. 

Alareon,  Pedro  Antonio  do,  24.'). 

Alcantara,  Dotn  Pedro  de,  anec 
dote  of,  204. 

Alcott,  Amos  Bronson,  54. 

Aldrioh,  Thomas   Bailey,  70,  92, 

114,  120,  121,   122,   179,  277, 
278,  310  312,  354,  357,  1.50. 

Appleton,  Thomas,  152,  184,  185, 

180,  188,  190,  201. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  332. 
Arthur,  Cheater  Alan,  375. 
Austen,  Jane,  319. 

BARUFTT,   LAWRKNVK,  203,  204. 
Beeoher,  Henry  Ward,  99. 
Bellamy,  Kdward,  347. 
Bjornaon.  Bjdrnntiernc,  208,  203. 
Booth,   Fxlwin,   107. 
Bowles,  Samuel,  113,  120. 
Bovesen,   Iljalrnar   lljorth,  250- 

200,  2*0. 

Brare.  Charles  Loring,  335. 
Brooks,  Noah,  310. 
Browne,  Charles  Farrar,  80,  127, 

128. 

Ilrownell,  Henry  Howard,  93. 
Browning,   Robert,    3,    108,  211, 

320. 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  70,  114. 
Butter,  William  Allen,  77. 

CAULK,    GKOUUK    WASIUXOTON, 

115,  357,  403. 
Carlyle,  Thotnaw,  32,  42. 
Cary,  Aliee.  114. 
Catherwood,  Mary  Hart  well,  115 


Cervantes,  Miguel  de,  244,  317. 
Chanler,  Ameue  Hives.  115. 
Channing,   William     Kllery,    63, 

147. 
Child,  Franc!*  .1.,  181,  2,52-2.50, 

:«0,  3(W. 
Clemens.  Mrs.  Samuel  l-anghorne. 

309,   314-317,   323,   :WO,   390, 

391,  395. 
Clemens. Samuel  I.anghorne,  114, 

307  405. 

Conway,  Moneure  I).,  99,  114. 
Cookc,  Roae  Terry,  ill,  133. 
Cranrh,  Christopher  Pearse,  107, 

285. 
Curtis,  Oorge  William,   10,   12, 

70,  108  111,  195. 

DAXA,  CnAUi,r.8  A,  1 17. 

Dana,  Hiohanl  Henry,  Jr.,   181, 

273- 275. 

Darwin,  Charles  Hobert,  3.55. 
I)o  Forest,  John  William,  117. 
De  Quiney,  Thomas,  3,  302. 
Derby,  (}<H)rg<»   II.,  370. 
Dirkens,  Charles,  42,  290. 
Diokenson,  Anna,  301. 

Fi>i>v,  MAHV  BAKK!»  (1.,  :IS8. 

F.liot ,  (M»org«>,  2. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  3,  10, 
55,  00  05,  92,  111.  110,  117, 
132,  133,  134,  137,  138,  147, 
102,  171,  2<X),  210,  295,  323, 
311,  303  305,  405. 

FIKUM*.  JAMF.H  THOMAS,  33  35, 
30  12,  05,  00,  70,  85,  8tf,  111, 
112,  131,  140,  1.V2,  101,  184, 
291,  307,  308,  310. 


407 


LITERARY    FRIENDS   AND    ACQUAINTANCE 


Fiske,  John,  181,  272,  287. 
Florence,  William  James,  379. 
Fuller,  H.  B.,  115. 

GALLENGA,  ANTONIO  CARLO  NA- 

POLEONE,  259. 
Garfield,  James  A.,  209. 
Garland,  Hamlin,  115. 
Giles,  Henry,  70. 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  302,  319. 
Gorky,  Maxim,  397-399. 
Graham,  James  Lorrimer,  107. 
Grant,    Ulysses    Simpson,    375- 

377. 

Gray,  Asa,  181. 
Greene,  George  Washington,  192, 

193,  205. 

HALA,  CHAKLES,  91,  92. 

Hale,  Edward   Everett,   11,  91, 

114,  116,  118. 
Harris,  Joel  Chandler,  115. 
Harte,  Francis  Bret,  11 4, 118 1,231, 

272,  290-305,  310,  311,  351. 
Hawthorne,  Julian,  51. 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  2,  10,  17, 

38,  50-57,  60,  64,  71,  116,  118, 

162,  200,  211. 
Hay,  John,  81,  114,  320. 
Hayes,   Rutherford    B.,   9,    237, 

238. 
Heine,  Heinrich,  3,  16,  26,  216, 

296,  373. 
Higginson,  Thomas  Wentworth, 

114,  116,  147,  287. 
Hildreth,  Richard,  97-99. 
Hillard,  George  S.,  130,  131. 
Hillebrand,  Carl,  259. 
Holmes,  John,  280-283. 
Holmes,  Oliver  W'endell,  10,  36- 

40,  44-47,  52,  56,  76,  88,  91, 

92,   114,    116,    117,    118,    120, 

132,    134,    137,    140,    146-177, 

184,    185,  192,  195,  279,  363- 

366,  368,  405. 

Houghton,  H.  O.,  324,  362. 
Houghton  &  Mifflin,  362. 
Howe,  Julia  Ward,  114,  116,  131, 

132. 

Howell,  James,  26,  27. 
Hubbard,  Bartley,  105. 
Hugo,  Victor,  69. 


Hurd,  M.  M.,  102. 
IBSEN,  HENRIK,  245,  263. 
Ingersoll,  Robert  Green,  335. 

JAMES,  HENRY,  Jr.,  181. 
James,  Henry,  ST.,  151,  181,  266- 

269,  272. 

James,  William,  287. 
Jewett,  Sarah  Orne,  118. 
Judd,  Sylvester,  117. 

KEELER,  RALPH,  275-279,  297, 

310,  311. 

Kielland,  Alexander  Lange,  263. 
King,  Grace,  115. 

LAMB,  CHARLES,  304. 

Larcom,  Lucy,  122,  123. 

Lathrop,  George  Parsons,  354. 

Lewes,  George  Henry,  85. 

Lie,  Jonas  Lauritz  Edemil,  263. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  46,  81,  82, 
107,  220,  405. 

Lloyd,  Demarest,  329. 

Longfellow,  Henry  W7adsworth, 
3,  10,  15,  31,  91,  93,  103,  114, 
116,  117,  132,  147,  152,  161, 
162,  173,  181-211,  227,  232, 
271,  295,  350,  362,  363-365, 
405. 

Lorraine,  Claude,  341. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  2,  10,  22- 
29,  32,  35-40,  46,  47,  52,  76, 
88,  89,  91,  100,  103,  104,  108, 
112,  114,  116,  117,  120,  122, 
129,  147,  159,  162,  171,  173, 
181,  182,  184,  195,  196,  197, 
212-250,  280,  281,  283,  294- 
296,  338,  350,  405. 

Lowell,  Mrs.  James  Russell,  240, 
242,  243. 

Ludlow,  Fitzhugh,  70. 

MAARTENS,  MAARTEN,  259. 

Messadaglia,  Professor,  198. 

Michelet,  Jules,  3. 

Morris,  William,  320. 

Motley,    John    Lothrop,    93-97, 

147. 
Murfree,  Mary  Noailles,  115. 


NICOLAY,  JOHN,  81. 


408 


INDEX 


Norton,  Charles  Eliot,  100,  122, 
147,  181,  182,  184,  187,  194, 
216,  227,  288,  350,  355. 

O'BRIEN,  FITZ  JAMES,  70,  88. 
O'Connor,  William  D.,  82,  83. 
Osgood,  James  R.,  112,  121,  122, 
157,  329,  354. 

PAGE,  THOMAS  NELSON,  115. 
Palfrey,  John  Graham,  181,  283- 

286. 

Parkman,  Francis,  140-142,  147. 
Parsons,  Thomas  Williams,  181. 
Parton,  James,  142,  143. 
Peabody,  Andrew  Preston,  181. 
Pepys,  Samuel,  376. 
Phillips,  Wendell,  30. 
Phrenix,  John,  see  Derby,  George 

H. 

Piatt,  John  James,  1,  33,  82,  93. 
Piatt,  Mrs.  John  James,  93. 
Pierce,  James,   181. 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  63,  64,  200. 
Potter,  Edward,  311. 
Prescott,    Harriet,    see     Harriet 

Prescott  Spofford. 
Prescott,  William  H.,  147. 

QUINCY,  EDMUND,  129,  131. 

RAYMOND,  JOHN  T.,   326,   328- 

330. 

Reade,  Charles,  3,  42. 
Riley,  James  Whitcomb,  115. 
Ropes,  John  Codman,  144,  145. 
Ruffini,  Giovanni  Domenico,  259. 

SALVINI,  ALESSANDRO,  360. 
Salvini,  Tommaso,  205. 
Schurz,  Carl,  259. 
Scott,  Walter,  359. 
Scudder,  Horace  E.,  287. 
Skinner,  Henrietta  Dana,  275. 
Sophocles,  Evangelinus  Aposto- 

lides,  181,  183. 
Spofford,    Harriet    Prescott,    11, 

114,  116,  125,  126. 
Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  70, 

83,  84,  86,  92,  106,  114. 


Steele,  Richard,  302. 
Sterne,  Laurence,  302. 
Stoddard,  Charles  Warren,  115. 
Stoddard,     Elizabeth     Barstow, 

86-88,  106,  114. 
Stoddard,    Richard    Henry,   86- 

88,  92,  106,  114. 
Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  11,  114, 

116,  118,  138,  139,  140,  161, 

341,  362. 

Sumner,  Charles,  139,  200,  201. 
Swift,  Jonathan,  317. 

TAYLOR,  BAYARD,  3-5,  7-9,  10, 

107,  111,  114. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  3,  32,  42,  211. 
Thackeray,  William  Makepeace, 

2,  3. 

Thanet,  Octave,  115. 
Thaxter,  Celia,  124. 
Thomas,  Edith,  115. 
Thompson,  Maurice,  115,  201. 
Thoreau,  Henry  David,   11,  53, 

54,  57-60. 

Ticknor,  George,  130,  131. 
Ticknor  &  Fields,  13,  33,  40,  112, 

119,  307. 

Tolstoy,  Count  Leo,  320. 
Trowbridge,  John  Townsend,  122, 

123. 
Turguenieff,     Ivan     Sergyevich, 

286. 

Twain,  Mark,  see  Clemens,  Sam 
uel  Langhorne. 
Twichell,   Joseph   H.,   314,    335, 

349,  404. 

VALDES,  JUAN,  245. 

Valentine,  Edmund  Francois,  3. 

Vanderbilt,  William  Henry,  379. 

WARD,    ARTEMUS,    see    Browne, 

Charles  Farrar. 
Ward,  Mrs.  Phelps,  114,  116. 
Waring,  George  Edwin,  354. 
Warner,    Charles    Dudley,    311, 

313,  326,  365,  373. 
Washington,    George,    anecdote 

of,   190. 
Whipple,    Edwin    P.,    114,    126, 

127. 


409 


LITERARY   FRIENDS   AND   ACQUAINTANCE 


Whitman,  Walt,  73-76,  83,  134. 

Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  11,  32, 
92,  114,  116,  117,  134-136, 
138,  171,  200,  207,  362. 

Wilkins,  Mary  E.,  118. 


Willson,    Forceyethe,    92,    279, 

280. 

Winthrop,  Theodore,  92. 
Woolson,  Constance  F.,  115. 
Wyman,  Jeffries,  271. 


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